REHOBOTH IN THE PAST. 



HISTOEICAL ORATION 

DELIVERED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1860, 

BY 

SYLVANUS CHACE NEWMAN, A. M., 

MEMBER OP THE KHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HONORARY MEMBER OF 
THE DORCHESTER HISTORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY; AND GENEA- 
LOGICAL SECRETARY OF THE BLACKSTONE MONUMENT ASSOCIATION. 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROCEEDINGS 

IN SEEKONK, [the Ancient Rehoboth,] 

AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE DAY, 

COMPLETING TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN YEARS OF ITS HISTORY. 



"Bekold the pattern of the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made." 

Josh, xxii., 28. 



PAWTUCKET: 

PBINTED BY ROBERT SHERMAN, MAIN STREET. 

1860. 






Entered, according to Act of Congi'ess, in the year 1860, by 

Sylvanus Chace Newman, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for Rhode Island. 

NOV 8 )9b 



L_. 



[COERESPONOENCE.] 

Seekonk, July G, 1860. 
Bear Sir, — 

At a meeting of the Committee of Arrangements for the celebra- 
tion at Seckonk on the 4th inst., holden this day, the enclosed resolve was 
unanimously adopted, and it affords me pleasure to be the instrument of 
communicating the same to you. 

Permit me also to express the sense of gratitude which the Committee, in 
common with their fellow citizens, feel for the most acceptable service per- 
formed by you on that occasion, and also personally to solicit a compliance 
with the very general wishes of our inhabitants. 

"With profound respect, your obd't servant, 

JOSEPH BROWN. 
To S. C. Newman, Esq. 



[COPY.] 

^^ Resolved, That the thanks of the Committee of Arrangements be pre- 
sented to S. C. Newman, A. M., of Pawtucket, for the interesting and val- 
uable Historical Oration delivered by him at the Congregational Church, at 
Seekonk, on the 4th inst. 

Voted, That the Chairman, Joseph Brown, Esq., be a Committee to com- 
municate the foregoing resolution, and request a copy for the press." 

JOSEPH BROWN, Chairman. 
Attest : Wm. Ellis, Secretary. 



Pawtucket, R. L, July 10, 1860. 
Dear Sir, — 

Your kind note of the 6th inst., enclosing a copy of the resolution 
of the Committee for the late Festal Gathering in Seekonk, requesting a 
copy of my Oration delivered on that occasion, has been received. 

I am under obligations to the Committee for their favorable estimate of 
my discourse, and, relying upon their judgment, cheerfully comply with 
their request. 

Be pleased to accept my acknowledgments for the kind terras in which 
you have conveyed the request of the Committee, and be assured that I am, 
dear sir, 

Respectfully your obt. servt., 

S. C. NEWMAN. 
To Joseph Brown, Esq., \ 

Chairman of Committee, &c., J- 

Seekonk, Mass. ) 



DEDICATION. 



To THE Inhabitants of my Native Town, having been 

HONORED with AN INVITATION PROM THEIR COMMITTEE TO 
DELIVER IT, THIS OrATION, WITH WARM GRATITUDE FOR THE 

sympathizing attention with which it was received, is 
rljspectfully and affectionately 
Dedicated, 

By their Friend, 

S. C. NEWMAN. 



INTRODUCTOEY NOTE 



The following Oration is here printed from the manuscript as origi- 
nally prepared and delivered. 

In a field so broad, and covering so large a portion of time, it was 
found difficult to condense into the limits of a popular discom-se much 
that might be interesting to the future, in a historic point of view. 
Indeed, many of the facts were obliged to be so briefly alluded to as to 
render them hardly intelligible to the general reader ; but an attempt 
has been made to, in some measure, remedy this, and also to correct 
some long standing historic mistakes, by a series of appendant notes, 
referred to in the text by reference letters. Much time and labor 
has been bestowed in examining the sources from which early writers 
drew then" reported facts, and in research for other material relative to 
those times referred to in this discourse. And it is beheved that from 
the care thus bestowed upon the 7niuutice, the general aspect of this 
brief picture of Rehoboth in the Past will be found as substantially 
correct as so brief a limit could well admit of. 

The author would here tender his thanks to all who may have in any 
way contributed to the general success of that interesting Festal Gath- 
ering, in favor of which, the Public, as reflected from the Pulpit and 
the Press, has already pronounced its verdict. 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens: 

The partiality of the projectors of this 
pious gathering has placed me in a rather delicate 
j)osition, on account of my relationship to the founder 
of this ancient town and church ; but I shall endeavor 
to forego all such considerations, and seek to present 
ungarnished truth, let its inspiring mantle fall as it 
ma}^ 

On the centennial milestones that mark the sfreat 
highway of civilization, even back to the days of an- 
cient learning and artistic splendor, may be ,seen the 
graphic inscription, " We are living in an extraordi- 
nary age." This has been the spontaneous exclama- 
tion of observing men in every past age ; and it has 
been relatively true. Nor has it lost any of its truth 
in this, our age ; but rather returns upon us in ten- 
fold force. We, too, are living in a truly wonderful 
asre. Nature has commenced revealins: her sublimer 
mysteries. Science has commenced in earnest to open 
her inner temple, and is rapidly upsetting the mis- 
takes of the past, and is scattering the seeds of utility 
broadcast over the age in which we live. Time is an 
insatiable depredator, and by silently appearing to 



10 



take nothing, is too often permitted to take all. But, 
in this age, if we go to the site of Babylon or Nine- 
veh, and see nothing externally but a heap of dust — 
if in gazing externally at the prostrate columns and 
shattered capitals of Palmyra, Baalbec and Thebes, we 
read nothing but ruin — if, in fancy, we take our stand 
in the dim, hushed temple of Karnak, and by the red 
glare of torchlight can read nothing but the dialect of 
eternal decay, — yet by skillfully applying the smooth 
and polished keys of present Science to the labyrinth- 
ian locks of Nature and ancient art, the accuracy of 
the present state of the comparative anatomy of things 
will cause a few apparently useless fragments to reveal 
all the fair proportions of the ancient structure, and 
reproduce it in all its dimensions. If Time has dealt 
harshly with the sculptured marble, it is now within 
the reach of reproduction ; and what is still more won- 
derful in this age, if the shade of Time has stealthily 
drawn his decomposing brush over the speaking can- 
vas, robbing the pictured form of its grace, and tar- 
nished the cheek of beauty, it is an achievement of 
this age that the fair and manly forms that once sat 
by the easels of Titian, Rubens or Raphael, though 
defaced by time, or earlier incompetent restorers, can 
now, by scientific art, be restored to all the exact 
original grace and tints once imparted by the pencils 
of those great masters. But am.ong the many other 
prominent features of this age, is that of its spirit and 
energy in antiquarian research, and in drawing forth 
from the musty archives of the past^ detached and faded 
facts, and, through the comparative anatomy of Truth, 
restore something of the originals, and place them in 



11 



more durable condition, for the benefit of present and 
coming generations of men. 

In attempting to present on this occasion something 
of the original settlers of this venerable town, I shall 
not summon them from yonder cemetery, in their 
skeletons of bones, and offer them to your mental 
view merely in shrouds and coffins, but shall endeavor 
to reclothe them with flesh and sinew, and to drape 
them in the habiliments of their once mortal exist- 
ence, and, in some measure, present them as they trod 
this consecrated platform of religious and social life 
two hundred years ago. 

And, first, I will endeavor to present a glance at the 
life of the founder of this town and its first pastor. 
Dr. Cotton Mather, the learned author of the Magna- 
lia, is one of the principal colonial historians who has 
given us information on this matter ; but he has fallen 
into some mistakes, thereby misleading later annal- 
ists, which I have corrected from earlier and authen- 
tic sources. 

Rev. Samuel Newman was the son of Richard New- 
man, who was a glover, or dealer in gloves and other 
leathern articles of apparel, and who lived in respecta- 
ble standing at Banbury, Oxford county, fifteen miles 
from Oxford University, in England. The records of 
the church at Banbury show^ that this child was bap- 
tized, or christened, May 24, 1602, and as the rules of 
the church required this ceremony within two weeks 
from birth, when circumstances would permit, he was 
probably born about the 10th or 12th of May, 1602. 
The annals of the times present us with but little 
minutice in his earlier life, so that we can only form 



12 



our estimate of the boy by surrouiicling circumstances 
and the subsequent man. The family had long been 
noted in the realm of England for their uniform adhe- 
sion to the Protestant religion, and also for their piety 
and oreneral moral rectitude. Under these influences 
the boy exhibited studious habits and also contempla- 
tive propensities. His parents bestowed upon him a 
good early education, and then placed him at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. He first entered St. Edmund's Hall 
for study at the age of fourteen, that department be- 
ing a cheaper mode of living, but was afterwards reg- 
istered as a member of Trinity College, Oxford, where 
he graduated with its honors October IT, 1620, at the 
age of eighteen, (a) With all his early proclivities thus 
nourished and cultivated, and his studious intimacy 
with Rev. Dr. Featly, an eminent theologic Professor^ 
and also his intimacy with Rev. William Gouge, (who, 
for nine years, was never once absent from morning 
and evening prayers, and who read fifteen chapters 
of the Bible every day during that nine years,) with 
men like these for his chosen associates, though far 
superior in years, it is not much of a wonder that a 
writer of that age remarked that '' he early became a 
very able minister of the New Testament."" (/>) Dr. 
Mather, with his accustomed carelessness in minutiiCy 
states that the religious persecutions of the times 
caused him seven removes from churches in England, 
and finally his eighth remove to America. The last 
is true, but all else is a seven-fold mistake, having no 
better foundation than his hallucinations of withcraft. 
This young and talented ornament to the christian 
world temporarily supplied several different pulpits 



13 



during the absence of their pastors, and was really 
settled nowhere till in 1625, then aged twenty-three, 
when he was installed pastor of Midhope Chapel, in 
the West Riding of Yorkshire ; and on that occasion 
his congregation presented their young and brilliant 
preacher with this ministerial cane, now two hundred 
and thirty-five years old, and a hale old rosewood staff 
yet. [Cane exhibited.] He remained at that church 
ten years, or until 1G35. In that year the degrading 
religious persecutions of Archbishop Laud, who was 
afterwards suddenly made a head shorter, reached the 
climax of bitterness for non-conformity to those whim- 
sical outward ceremonials which, to the really intelli- 
gent and christian people, so much resembled the old 
Roman hierarchy; and it was in that year, 1635, and 
not in 1636 nor 1638, as related by some of our early 
annalists, that this man, with his young family and a 
sister Elizabeth, came to America. In that year there 
Avas a large emigration, and "among them a company 
who, in the records of Dorchester, are called the 
second emigration. Among them was Rev. Richard 
Mather, the progenitor of that race in America, and 
our Samuel Newman, as passengers together. In that 
year, owing to a large emigration from Dorchester to 
Connecticut, including their pastor, Rev. Mr. Warham, 
this new company took the place of those leaving, 
and purchased their lands and improvements. Mr. 
Mather and the new comers reors-anized the church 
and drew up a new covenant, which afterwards served 
as the basis of nearly all New England, and in this 
organization Mr. Newman participated. He resided 
at Dorchester four years, instead of one or two, as has 



14 



often been stated ; and the records of Dorchester say 
that he was a useful citizen among them in organizing 
their civil and religious condition, and a useful man in 
a variety of ways. It does not appear that he was in 
the ministry while at Dorchester, any more than as 
a member of the church, and perhaps an occasional 
preacher, but was engaged in writing his Concordance 
to the Bible, and waiting for a suitable field of labor 
when called for. He was a freeman of the Massachu- 
setts Colony and a housekeeper while at Dorchester ; 
and in his will, twenty-five years later, mentions his 
old house-servant at Dorchester, and makes her a 
bequest. 

In 1639 the church at Weymouth had got itself into 
three contending factions under three teachers, who 
were there at the same time, viz.: Mr. Hull, Mr. Jen- 
ner and Mr. Lenthal. In this state of things the peo- 
ple of Weymouth invited Mr. Newman to become their 
sole pastor in 1G39. He consulted his friends and his 
duty, and concluded to gratify their wishes. He im- 
mediately sold his lands to Mr. Mather, as appears by 
deeds, and took charge of the church at Weymouth, 
and in him all the people of Weymouth cordially uni- 
ted ; and thus permanently commenced his ministerial 
labors in America. In Weymouth he gave ample sat- 
isfaction to all his people, and besides his duties as a 
citizen and pastor, he was diligent in carrying forward 
his great work, the first /«// Concordance to the Bible 
ever attempted. He remained there till the spring of 
1644. His people, joined by others of Hingham, con- 
cluding that a settlement at this place would afford 
them better lands and a pleasanter location, miited in 



15 



purchasing of Massasoit a territory ten miles square ; 
and pastor, church and people, leaving a SDiall minor- 
ity remaining, migrated to this spot and settled as a 
new community ; and regarding their pastor as their 
Joshua, tliey constituted him, by common consent, the 
founder and namer of this new town. The original 
Indian name of this place, Seekonk, was a union of 
two Indian words, seeld, black, and oiik, goose, or large 
bird ; — thus it meant hJack goose, or what we call wild 
goose ; and the Indians thus named it from the great 
numbers of that bird which in that age congregated 
in the neighboring Cove, on the west side of this place. 
Thus originated this town, to which the pastor gave 
the scriptural name of Rehoboth, remarking that " the 
Lord hath opened a way for us." He probably had in 
mind the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis, verse 2 2d, 
which reads thus : " And he called the name of it 
Rehoboth ; and he said, for now the Lord hath made 
room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." 
This Hebrew term signified a broad way or street, a 
broad place, a plateau, and certainly the topography 
of this place will justify its adoption as a proper name. 
Having thus traced this pious man from the place 
of his birth to this his last abiding place, I will en- 
deavor to group together the outlines of his history, 
and that of his chosen people, down to the period of 
his death. On commencing- life anew, each rendered 
in the amount of his property, for purposes of taxa- 
tion ; and Mr. Newman's amount was £530. [c) The 
first houses were log, thatched buildings, with large 
stone chimnej^s; and they built the town in a semi- 
circle, called " the ring of the town," open on the west, 



16 



with the church in the centre, and within a few feet 
of this present building; and the general outlines of 
the town are now plainly visible. At this period they 
were not considered as belonoino- to or connected with 
either the Massachusetts Colony or the Plymouth Col- 
ony, but w^ere, in reality, an independent plantation. 
And in this condition, while they could consult their 
general wants at the public and frequent town meet- 
ings, yet they felt the need of something of a court or 
tribunal, to whom they should submit ; and to meet 
this, the pastor drew up an instrument which yet 
remains in the archives of the town, and wdiich still 
bears the autograph signatures of the thirty heads of 
families as then existing. It provided that once a 
year the whole town should have a voice in choosing 
nine discreet men from among themselves, and that 
the decision of a majority of the nine should be final 
in all matters of dispute or disagreement. It was a 
very simple arrangement, but as it possessed equity 
powers, and was selected by the people themselves, 
and called " townsmen," it answered all its purposes, 
juid has existed, with various alterations of its powers, 
down to your present " selectmen." This compact was 
signed July 3, 1643. (d) The town was afterwards 
annexed to the Plymouth Colony, and so remained 
till the union of the two colonies in 1691. The 
church instructed the town, and the town provided for 
the church ; and for more than a century following 
seemed to provide for the church as a part of itself. 
The first public meetings were held under the shade 
of trees in suitable weather, and in private houses 
when the season required it, both religious and secu- 



lar. The first we hear of a meeting-honse was in 
October, 1646, when a tax was made to build one. 
The meeting-house was partially made and rendered 
habitalDle in 1647, and it stood where now is the wall 
of the cemetery, and its south side was where the tomb 
now is. In 1648 there was a tax ^ov finishing the meet- 
ing-house. In 1659 they enlarged the meeting-house 
by putting on what the vote calls a " new end," and 
contracted that it be shinsrled as well as Goodman 
Payne's house ; and from this period the house lasted, 
with some repairs, fifty-nine years, or until 1718, when 
they built the second house, fronting with the old one, 
but thirty feet east of it. That second house I have 
seen ; it had two sets of galleries, one above the other, 
and it disappeared in 1814, four years after this pres- 
ent house was erected, in 1810, having lasted, with 
various repairs, ninety-six years ; and at last became 
a residence for sheep and bats, and finally its lumber 
was used in erecting the present town-house or hall. 
But from this meeting-house digression let us return 
to their first years. In the absence of bells, they beat 
the drum to give notice of the time for public worship ; 
and seating the meeting according to seniority and 
other orders of respectability was the delicate task of 
a yearly committee appointed by the town. In some 
parts of New England it was the custom to preach 
by the hour, as measured by the hour-glass, and the 
preacher must preach till the sand had run out, wheth- 
er his ideas had all run out or not; (c) but such was 
not the case with this people, — they had an able min- 
ister, who measured his discourse by its importance 
and his ability in condensing it. Everything wore a 



18 



religious aspect ; l)ut tliey took no part in tlioso super- 
stitious follies involved in the early laws of Connecticut 
nor the persecutions at the headquarters of the Bay 
Colony at Boston. The first settlers of this place 
were very generally men of good abilities, and of con- 
siderable more than ordinary education for those times. 
But they were an isolated plantation ; and it provokes 
a smile to read on their town records of 1649 the ap- 
pointment of a committee of two of their ablest men, 
John Brown and Stephen Payne, with powder to em- 
ploy a surveyor ; and for what ? why to accomplish 
the difficult task of finding the way to Dedham ! a 
journey now traveled in about forty minutes. This 
vote alone is a whole chapter in the history of the 
diflerence between their times and ours. They were 
on good terms with their Indian friends, and having 
purchased and paid for their lands, the Indians fully 
acknowledged their peaceable possession down to the 
time of Philip's war. (/) There was a very faithful 
Indian, whose original name ought to have been pre- 
served, but whom the settlers called Sam, whether 
after their pastor or otherwise I know not, but he 
was the general shepherd for the town in watching 
their flocks and herds at the great " Ox Pasture," and 
drivino; the cows home at nig-ht and distributing;: them 
about in their appropriate yards ; and such was the 
esteem in which he was held, that on the books of the 
town there is a vote admitting him to all the privi- 
leges of citizenship. This is the first instance, and I 
think the only instance, in all our colonial history, 
wdiere a native born American has been naturalized 
on his own soil by a community of foreigners j but 



19 



the name of " Uncle Sam " yet remains a very popular 
cognomen for our common country. 

Their town meetino;s were held in their meetinir- 
house, and for many years "Father Bowen," as the 
records calhMr. Richard Bowen, was a sort of stereo- 
typed moderator; and he also served as clerk. And 
here a word on the term 3Ir. It w^as very rarely 
applied, and only to clergymen and citizens of much 
more than ordinary distinction, and more rarely than 
we now use the title of Honorable. The common title, 
as we now use Mister, was Goodman, and for 3frs. they 
used the term Goodwife or Goody ; — thus Goodman 
and Goody Paine instead of Mr. and Mrs. Paine. I 
mention this little fact because it will throw lii»;ht on 
old books when being read by young persons ; and 
this was not a peculiar trait in this people, but com- 
mon to that ac!:e in all the colonies. Their loo: houses, 
with clay-thatched roofs, resembled a thing two stories 
in front and no story in the rear, the back eaves reach- 
ing nearly to the ground and towards the north to ward 
off storms, and the front facing the south to enjoy the 
sun. The fi re-place and oven of stone, and chimney- 
flue of board lined with clay, were of large dimensions, 
so that there were little sitting-rooms on each side of 
the huge fire, with oak benches for sofas, from which 
they could look out of the chimney and see the same 
stars, planets and moon which had shone on them in 
their native Europe, with inspiring visions of the homes 
of their forefathers. Fire-wood was plentiful, and their 
food, clothing, furniture and general habits were so 
plain and substantial that they knew not the w\ant of 
valerian root, homoeopathic globules, or artificial bloom 



20 



for their cheeks. In these independent castles there 
were rehgious purity, much innocent merriment and 
general neighborhood sociality ; and barley beer, made 
by the goody or mother of the family, was the common 
beverage when they exceeded water. In this plain, 
unsophisticated manner, with pitch-pine knots whit- 
tled into candles, they spent their winter evenings in 
teaching children to read, write and cipher, and in 
cheerful social parties, frequently attended by their 
smiling pastor, who, with all his puritan gravity, was 
often caught at play with the assembled children of the 
Avhole neighborhood as if they had been his own. (//) 
The young men were ambitious in the art of tilling 
the soil, and of being found at church on the Sabbath ; 
and the girls, though constant at church, were hardly 
considered marriageable till, in addition to their daily 
practice in the art of housekeeping, they could show 
a pillow-case full of stockings of their own knitting, 
and woollen, linen and tow dresses enough, spun with 
their own hands, to last them till their first born daugh- 
ter would be old enough to begin to pull flax. Every- 
body learned a trade, and that trade was, the art or 
mystery of being diligent in some real utility. How 
different were those girls from ours ! I am not here 
to say which are the best ; but if the Great Author of 
the celebrated sermon on the Mount were here, he 
might see fit to repeat his own words in reference to 
many of the young ladies of this age : " They toil 
not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory 
was not arrayed like one of these." Their mode of 
travel was generally on foot. There were but few 
horses for horseback, and no carriages other than the 



21 



ox carts for farming ; and when new comers began to 
settle at a distance from the " ring of the town," they 
often took their families to meeting with ox teams. 
But with all this simplicity of social condition, they 
were a pious, intelligent, law-abiding and hos2:>itable 
people, exhibiting much of genuine goodness, and left 
an example that entitles the soil that here they once 
trod to be regarded as consecrated ground, — conse- 
crated to religion, to sound morality and to good citi- 
zenship ; and, as such, their memory is entitled to our 
gratitude and respect. 

Such was the general aspect of this community doAvn 
to 1663, the j)eriod of the death of their pastor, and 
such were the people with whom he held daily inter- 
course, and to whom he weekly, and often semi-weekly, 
imparted his ministrations. I will now attempt a brief 
summary of his life and character ; and in doing this 
shall offer no high-wrought eulogy, but simply present 
him in the position to which he is fairly entitled, and 
the position which I think he is destined to occupy 
in coming ages. 

His Concordance. There had been partial Concord- 
ances, or rather indexes to certain parts of the Bible, 
attempted by Cardinal Charo, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, and by several others in Hebrew, Greek and 
Latin, but the fivstftiU Concordance in English, that on 
which Cruden's and all later ones are based, was writ- 
ten or compiled by Samuel Newman. The first edition 
was printed at London in 1643, the last year of his 
ministry at Weymouth. The second edition was pre- 
pared in this town and printed at London in 1650, and 



22 



tlic third and last edition, still more complete, was 
prepared here and printed at London in 16-58, two 
hundred and two years ago this year; and here is the 
identical copy he reserved for his own nse. It has 
been pronounced by Biblical scholars a monument of 
learning, genius, industry and skill. To the christian 
world, as its sacred literature then was, the admirable 
arrangement and perfect execution of this task was a 
glittering casket of diamonds, cut from the Scriptures, 
and set, for convenience, in pictures of gold. Highly 
and justly as this perfect guide to every significant 
word in the whole Bible, Apocrypha and all, was prized 
in Europe and America, this infant town, though then 
a wilderness, could claim the honor of its production. 
But, 

" Each pleasure hath its poison, too, 
And every sweet a snare." 

His publishers at London failed and defrauded him of 
all pecuniary reward for his labors; and about the 
time of his death, another edition being called for by 
the sales it met with, it was re-published at Cambridge 
University, England, under the high-sounding title of 
the " Cambridge Concordance," faintly crediting its 
authorship to the initial letters " S. N.," in small type, 
without statin o; whether of Old or New Eng;land, or 
the moon. Perhaps it would be difficult to find in 
the whole history of authorship an instance of more 
flagrant wrong committed upon a toiling scholar, about 
leaving the world, and unable to speak for himself by 
a distance of three thousand miles. But it was said by 
the Psalmist of old, " The righteous shall be in ever- 
lasting remembrance," a reward of far more value than 



23 



booksellers' remittances; and I am proud of an op- 
portunity, though at the distance of two centuries, to 
vindicate his memory on this the original site of his 
achievements, though I could wish that the task had 
fallen to abler hands. Thus much of this sacred monu- 
ment of his literary labors. 

His intellectual and keligious character, and his 
DEATH. It is to be regretted that thirteen years after 
his decease, his library and papers, bequeathed in his 
will to his son Noah, and successor in the ministry, 
fared hard at the burnino; of the "ring; of the town" 
on the 28th of March, 1676, by the Indians in Philip's 
war. Only a fragment of his diary escaped that con- 
flagration, but it is an important one. It w^as the 
j)rivate platform of his life, and the one on wdiich 
cotemporary w^'iters say he implicitly stood during 
his whole residence in America. This brief but im- 
j)ortant document is as follows : 

" Notes or marks of grace I find in myself; not wherein I desire to 
glory, but to take ground of assurance, and after our apostle's rules, 
to mahe my election siwe, though I find them but in weak measure : 

1. I love God, and desire to love God, principally ybr himself. 

2. I desire to requite evil with good. 

3. A looking up to God, to see him and his hand in all things that 
befall me. 

4. A greater fear of displeasing God, than all the world. 

5. A love of such christians as I never saw, or received good from. 

6. A ^ri'e/'when I see God's commands broken by any person. 

7. A mourning for not finding the assurance of God's love, and the 
sense of his favour, in that comfortable manner, at one time as at another ; 
and not being able to serve God as I should. 

8. A willingness to give God the glory of any aiility to do good. 

9. A joy when I am in christian company, in Godly conference. 



24 



10. A grief, when I perceive it goes ill with dmstians, and the 
contrary. 

11. A constant performance of secret duties, between God and my- 
self, mornina; and evenino;. 

12. A bewaihng of such sins which none in the world can accuse 
me of. 

13. A choosmg of s?{^e?7'«^ to avoid sin." 

As liis implicit practice of, and adherence to, these 
thirteen golden rules, offsprings of their great proto- 
type in the New Testament, is corroborated by ample 
cotemporar}^ testimony, no other evidence need be 
adduced to exhibit his as a well balanced, pure and 
lofty christian character. The more they are scru- 
tinized from a christian stand-point, the purer and 
brighter they will shine. And, to a suggestive mind, 
this number of thirteen might appear as rather ominous, 
for they would have strengthened the moral force of 
that immortal document we have heard read to-day 
as the platform of the thirteen new-born States, crea- 
ting a vast Eepublic, which can permanently endure 
only on a basis of political righteousness. 

There are two events in his life which we could 
wish had never occurred, because they were misrepre- 
sented in the history of those times ; but neither of 
them did his character any permanent harm, as they 
received their false coloring from the careless use of 
words by earlier and partizan historians. I would not 
shroud his faults in the mantle of his virtues, ample as 
that would be to cover them, for that would not be 
honest. That he participated in the limited vision that 
belongs to our mortal existence there can be no doubt. 
The sun itself has spots, and imperfection is clearly 



9H 



admitted in the twelfth item of his personal platform. 
The two events are these : Eight persons, with Oba- 
diah Holmes as their leader, adopting the Baptist sen- 
timents, voluntarily withdrew from this church and 
held meetings of their own. The censure imputed 
to the pastor by the polemical wTiters of those times 
consisted in what they tortured into harshness in 
excommunicating these persons from his church, when 
all he did in the matter was to formally discontinue 
their names as members of his church, after they had 
voluntarily withdrawn. The word excommunicate was 
not the right term ; it implied an unkindness that he 
never manifested. It is true that Obadiah Holmes 
was unmercifully and w^rongfully whipped for his re- 
ligious opinions, but it was done for the exercise of 
those opinions in another place, and by the rigid, per- 
secuting authorities at Boston, and in a colony that 
had no control over Rehoboth. In religious tolera- 
tion, the governments of the Massachusetts and Ply- 
mouth Colonies were two very different bodies, and 
so were the people that sustained them ; and this was 
one of the freest towns in this colony. But toleration, 
in those days, was as far as any of them could see, 
and to be tolerant was to be magnanimous. But tol- 
eration implies the reserved right to withhold that 
which is tolerated. The great idea that perfect relig- 
ious freedom, in all matters of conscience, was an in- 
herent, inalienable right in man, was reserved for an 
outcast of the Massachusetts Colony, and not the Ply- 
mouth. The sublime truth of "soul liberty" was a 
celestial spark that ignited the heart of Roger Wil- 
liams alone, but was destined by Omniscience to shed 
4 



26 



its radiance over our entire world. The intolerant 
severity wrongfully attributed to Rehoboth, had no 
real existence. And I think that if our aged friend, 
Avho, thank God, still lives, and is with us here to-day, 
the venerable and learned historian of the great and 
respectable Baptist denomination in this and other 
countries, [Rev. Dr. Benedict,] had written his lumi- 
nous history imder the developments of the present 
day, instead of a half century ago, I think that he, 
with all his acknowledged ability and fairness of pur- 
pose, would have more amply shielded the memory 
of this generous and high-minded christian scholar. 

The other regretted event is brief Several citi- 
zens, whose zeal probably swerved their judgment, 
reported to the pastor that Mr. Holmes had made a 
false statement on some matter at court ; and, in a 
public discourse on the importance of moral recti- 
tude, the pastor alluded to this report, not then suffi- 
ciently doubting its truth. Mr. Holmes brought an 
action for damages of £100. The pastor appeared at 
court, fully admitted the allusion he had made, and 
presented the testimony of those wdio thus informed 
him, they further testifying that they were mistaken 
and not Avillful in the charge. The court, seeing no 
evidence of intentional wrong on the part of the ac- 
cused or his informers, dismissed the idea of any dam- 
age, and ordered that the pastor should pay only the 
few shillings of cost. The complainant, Mr. Holmes, 
expressed himself perfectl}'' satisfied that the pastor 
had intended him no Avrongful injury, and preferred 
to pay the cost himself; and, in his next public dis- 
course, the pastor took occasion to set the Avhole mat- 



27 



ter right. This case still stands thus on the Plymoiitli 
records; yet there have not been wanting religions 
partizans who have stated that the pastor of this chnrch 
was prosecnted for defamation, damages £100, without 
giving its honorable termination. And this complain- 
ant was the same Ol^adiah Holmes who had been for- 
merly dismissed from this church at his own request, 
but not '^^excommunicated ;" and his manly feelings ex- 
hibited in this case show how little he supposed the 
meek pastor of this ancient church had to do with his 
being whipped at Boston for his religious opinions by 
those ministerial tigers who were so " voracious to do 
good." 

Hospitality and generosity were marked features 
in his character. AVe read in Goldsmith of a parson 

" Passing rich with forty pounds a year." 

Our pastor had fifty pounds a year, but as he was the 
largest tax-payer in the town, excepting two, his peo- 
ple gave themselves but little trouble about paying 
him, deeming their wants for improvements to be 
greater than his, and with which he found but little 
fault. He loved his church as if it had been his fam- 
ily, and taught his family as if it had been his church ; 
and his church was pretty nearly the town. Once, 
on a journey from Boston to Rehoboth on horseback, 
[after that committee, with their civil engineer, had 
found the way to Dedham,] our pastor accidentally 
heard of a set lecture to be delivered by Rev. Richard 
Mather, at Dorchester, for the particular benefit of 
certain noted irreligious men. He resolved to hear 
it, and, turning his horse, rode to Dorchester, arriving 



28 



there just as Mr. Mather was opening his meeting with 
prayer. Mr. Mather pressed him into his own place 
as preacher for the occasion, thus unexpectedly. Our 
pastor delivered one of his off-hand " christian philippics y^ 
and the result was that, in after days, several eminent 
christian citizens of Dorchester dated their conversion 
from that meeting. 

Very few of his discourses were ever committed to 
writing. He is described by his almost forgotten co- 
temporaries as a lively, energetic and highly eloquent 
extemporaneous speaker, whose perspicuous sermons, 
like the orations of Homer's Nestor, 

" Whose lip dropped language sweet," 

and which fell like the dews of Hermon on his cap- 
tive congregations ; and if stenography or phonogra- 
phy had been as common then as now, this old town 
might have furnished one of the richest caskets of 
jewels in our country's theologic literature. 

In a sort of three-fold eulogy pronounced by an 
eminent clergyman of those times, the year 1663 is 
termed a memorable year, inasmuch as in that year 
Norton of the Massachusetts Colony, Stone of the 
Connecticut Colony, and Newman of the Plymouth 
Colony, — the three divines from whom their respec- 
tive colonies were then drawing their largest share of 
christian light and influence, — all three expired within 
a few days of each other ; a fact to which President 
Stiles of Yale College, a century later, adds his cor- 
roborative testimony. This remark alone, among the 
distinguished men of that age, implied no small dis- 
tinction. 



29 



But althonglihe has lived in the floating paragraphs 
of biographical dictionaries, and in the detached and 
fading scraps of a too mnch neglected department of 
by-gone literature, and in his Concordant folio of Bibli- 
cal jewels of utility and energy, yet his grave, in yon- 
der cemetery, remains unmarked by a fragment that 
tells his name ; and his memory is almost in the con- 
dition of another of more distant times, of whom it 
was said : " He was an ornament to the age in which 
he lived, but, in the multiplied troubles of the age, he 
had no historian, and was forgot." 

I have but little faith in what is now passing over 
this age under the name of " Spiritualism," but I know 
of nothing in revelation, or in the laws of Nature as 
thus flir developed in the fields of physical or intellec- 
tual philosophy, that positively precludes the idea that 
the disembodied existences of just men made perfect 
take cognizance and interest in the more refined por- 
tions of the mode of existence in which they once had 
so great an interest. In the absence of all positive 
proof, analogy would seem to favor the position that 
they do. The apostrophy in rhetoric is based on this 
probability. If, then, your departed pastor of this 
ancient church, with his beloved Deacons Cooper and 
Carpenter, and Goodman Paine, and Wheaton, and 
Bowen, and Read, and all that pious band of warm- 
hearted christians who, two centuries ago, trod in 
cheerful meekness this consecrated soil, — if they are 
now witnessing with interest this pious gathering of 
their descendants to commemorate them, let us listen 
a moment, with the ear of imagination, and catch 
some faint resemblance of their thoughts to us, as 



30 



ihoy are Ijreathed on seraphs' wings and wafted from 
their celestial portals. 

" Descendants and successors, now gathered on the 
spot of our once mortal existence ! With a vision 
incomprehensible to you, w'e turn a moment from 
our higher employments, and with sympathetic in- 
terest in your present existence, we greet you in the 
dialect of earth. AVhen we once breathed the life 
that you now breathe, we, like you, w^ere mortal and 
imperfect, and stood upon a probationary foundation. 
We only acted in earnest the best we then knew, and 
in the ligrht of that Revelation which was then our 
guide, and should now be yours. In our weakness 
we were sustained through our faith in promised 
grace, and clothed in the mantle of the great atone- 
ment. Thus equipped in the armor of Christ, who is 
now our associate, we were admitted to these realms 
wdiere just men are made perfect, and where they 
reap the legitimate awards that flow, as a natural 
result, from their innate purity, thus made perfect 
through Divine influence. In the light of these, our 
mortal trials and immortal triumphs, we sa}^ to you, 
live on in the full discharge of your duty ; — to the 
best of your ability fulfil every Divine command, and 
cling to the atonement, in all its essential conditions, 
as your ark of safet}^. Thus answer the greatest ob- 
ject of your mortal existence, and, in due time, come 
to us. Then will we joyfully introduce you to scenes 
which mortal eye hath not seen, nor ear heard — a 
blissful beatitude, unknown and unexpressed in the 
dialect of man ; and, with you, enjoy such an exist- 
ence, in unfading life, through endless duration. In- 



31 



habitants of our once earthly abode ! We appreciate 
the objects of your innocent, fraternal gathering, the 
first of its kind since we were summoned away ; and, 
with thoughts like these, we beckon you to a better 
world, at the appointed timcj and until you thus 
meet us — adieu !" 

Returning from this digressive apostrophy, we will 
close the ecclesiastic portion of our review by de- 
scribing the singular death of the first pastor of this 
church, and then turn our attention to civic thino-g. 

His death was different from that of the ordinary 
lot of men, but I do not regard it in that miraculous 
light in which it was then viewed, wonderful and ex- 
traordinary as it truly was. From the nature of his 
Biblical studies in compiling his Concordance, he had 
every part of the Divine revelations under constant 
rumination, and this, to him, was the means of arriv- 
ing at an extraordinary measure of that sanctity which 
these great truths, rightly improved, would naturally 
inspire. Thus, as he drew towards the close of his 
life, he seemed to advance more and more towards 
the beginnings of his final triumph over his portion 
of our fallen nature ; and a foresight of its joys very 
observably, but calmly, irradiated his whole being. 

On Sunday, June 28, 1663, 0. S., one hundred and 
ninety-seven years ago this year, he delivered his last 
sermon, from Job xiv., 14 : " All the days of my appoint- 
ed time will I wait, until my change come." In that 
discourse he presented a brilliant synopsis of his whole 
christian teachings since he had been their shepherd, 
informing his sorrow-smitten congregation that his 
mission upon earth was closed, and imparted his final 



and tearful benedictions, though then in perfect health 
and but sixty-one years of age. He was seen no more 
mingling in the affairs of men, and spent the follow- 
ing seven days at his house, in the midst of his family 
altar, where his physical nature gradually grew weak 
without pain and without any visible cause ; and as 
his mortal structure receded, his spiritual being visi- 
bly increased in heavenly irradiation. On the fol- 
lowing Sunday, July 5, the church drum was silent, 
and ceased to call the accustomed congregation, and 
men met each other that morning in silent salutation 
and with downcast and foreboding countenances. A 
few select members of the church spent some time in 
an interview with their pastor, at his house, in the 
afternoon, of the minutiee of which there is no record, 
other than at the termination of it, he asked Deacon 
Cooper to close the parting with prayer ; immediately 
after which, he turned his face from the gaze of mor- 
tals towards the wall of the room, and calmly spoke 
these words : " And now, ye angels of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, come, do your office !" and gently falling back 
upon his couch, breathed no more. 

Such was the manner of his death, as attested by 
Rev. Drs. Mather, Elliot and others ; and accounts of 
it were drawn up at the time by several clergymen 
and others, and sent to their friends in England ; but 
they gave to it a miraculous shade to which these sin- 
gular facts were not entitled. The laws of physical 
and intellectual life were less understood then than 
now ; and there was no miracle about it. It was sim- 
ply a result ; not a general, but an occasional result, 
flowing from a deeply pious and energetic intellectual 



christian life ; and was but another of the very few, 
but Avell authenticated, instances oi jrrenioiiiiion, or that 
premonitory presentiment whereby, for some Divine 
Providential reason, unknown to us, but which we have 
no right to question, — a well developed instance among 
the few who have been permitted to foresee the time 
and circumstances of their own exchange of worlds. 
His departure was long and deeply lamented by his 
bereaved flock, and throughout New England. In his 
toil on his Concordance and Biblical studies he was 
compared with Neander, a Rector of a German Uni- 
versity, who, in the preceding century, had spent 
many years of vast labor in making notes and com- 
mentaries on the Greek classics of antiquity ; and, in 
view of all these facts, an eminent scholar of another 
colony wrote the following brief but comprehensive 
Latin epitaph to his memory, which, if future piety 
and justice should ever set up a stone to his yonder 
lonely grave, might, with propriety, be a part of its 
inscription : 

" Mortuns est Neander Xov-Anglus, 
Qui ante mortem dedicit mori, 
Et obiit ea morte qua; potest esse, Ars bene moriendi." 

Which permit me to offer in an English dress : 



Thus died the Neander of New-England, 
Who iu his life had learned how to die, 
And whose death may be called the Art of dying wel 



{h) 



For the five succeeding years there was no settled 
minister of this church; but Rev. Mr. Symes, Rev. 
John Miles and Rev. Mr. Burkley were severally em- 
ployed to supply the desk until March, 1GG8, when 
Noah Newman, youngest son of the former pastor, 



34 



having then completed his preparatory studies, was 
ordained as the successor to his father -, and after ten 
years of acceptable and appreciated service, died in 
1678, and his grave is yonder, by the side of his father's. 
I have identified the location of each, but 

" No stone now tells 



Their name, their worth, their glory." 

The third pastor was Rev. Samuel Angier; from 
1679 till his health failed in 1692. 

The fourth was Rev. Thomas Greenwood ; settled in 
October, 1693. [The record looks like 91, but it is a 
faded 3.] 

The fifth was Rev. John Greenwood, son of the for- 
mer, and ordained 1721. These two Greenwoods were 
most worthy and pious men, and their memory should 
long be kept green as the woods of perennial summer. 

The sixth was Rev. John Carnes, a graduate of Har- 
vard, and installed April 18, 1759. He resigned his 
post in 1764, and from 1776 to the close of the Revo- 
lution was a chaplain in the American army, — nine 
years representative in the Legislature, and a mem- 
ber of the Massachusetts Convention that adopted the 
National Constitution. He died in 1802, aged 78, a 
patriotic and pious citizen of unblemished reputation. 

The seventh was Rev. Ephraim Hyde, a graduate of 
Yale College, ordained May 14, 1766, preached seven- 
teen years, and died in 1783, aged 45. He was much 
beloved by his people, and his grave is in yonder 
cemetery. 

The eighth was Rev. John Ellis, a graduate of Har- 
vard College in 1750. He was a chaplain in the army 



30 



tiiroiiglioiit the entire Revolution, a.ncl installed over 
this church March 30, 1785, dismissed, at his own re- 
quest, in 1796, from age and infirmities, and died at 
Norwich, Connecticut, 1806, aged 78. During the min- 
istry of Mr. Ellis, the neighboring and highly respec- 
table and flourishing Baptist Church on the south end 
of this Common was organized, in 1794. That church 
had its origin in a mistaken view of the ownership of 
certain legacies bequeathed to this society at an earlier 
period. They believed, or appeared to believe, that a 
donation made and accepted for a specific purpose, could 
be changed for another purpose at the will of a majority 
of its recipients ; and they being then in a majority, 
barred the doors of this church until the Supreme Ju- 
diciary, after a patient and most thorough investigation, 
unbarred them and restored order. But no crimination 
nor recrimination need now be uttered, for this state 
of things soon died away, and the two churches, though 
different in what I regard as non-essential human 
creeds, have long walked hand in hand in the spirit 
of unity ; and down to this day are exhibiting inter- 
changes and religious courtesies but rarely met Avith, 
and are setting an example of genuine liberality wor- 
thy of all christian commendation ; and they approach 
nearer than any instance within my knowledge to that 
immortal line in the writings of an English bard, a sen- 
timent which will one day pervade the whole world : 

'• Be all distinctions, in the chrtsiian, lost." 

The ninth pastor of this church was Rev. John Hill ; 
installed September 22, 1802, and lost his life by the 
kick of a horse in 1816. I was present at his funeral. 



36 



He was an erudite linguist in Hebrew, Greek and 
Latin, and well versed in the various departments of 
English literature. In addition to his ver}^ accepta- 
ble ministerial duties, he kept a school for the above 
named studies ; and was beloved by his church and 
the youth under his charge. His wife was Eoby 
Bowen ; born at Coventry, Rhode Island, November 
29, 1T6G, a lineal descendant, in the fifth generation, 
from " Father Richard Bowen,'' the town clerk and 
standing regulator of town meetings in this place two 
hundred years ago ; and she still survives in yonder 
house of her departed husband, in sight of this church, 
and at the age of nearly ninety-four, and being the 
nearest link that connects us w4th the first settlers of 
this ancient town. The w^ord grandfather, with two 
greats to it, will carry this lady back, genealogically, 
to England, at a period when the passengers of the 
Mayflower w^ere quietly located in Holland, and when 
no Indian in these colonies had ever beheld a pale- 
faced European. This fact arose from several gene- 
rations being l)orn late in the lives of their fathers. 
"Father Bowen" died February 4, 1675, at an ad- 
vanced age, [I know not what,] and two families of 
his grand-children, containing fourteen persons, lived 
one thousand and thirty-nine years, being an average 
of over seventy-four 3'ears each. 

De morluis nil nisi venim. 

The fc/ff/i is our friend. Rev. James 0. Barne}^, the 
present pastor, a graduate of Brown University, and 
ordained February 4, 1824, and whose labors and 
success, and whose long appreciation by this people. 



is a subject which will tell its own story 
able task, of which I have no prescriptive right to 
rob the future historian. Long may it yet be before 
his successor shall be finally announced. 

Thus much of this ancient church. The town, as it 
originally existed, has given birth to seven towns and 
fragments of three or four more ; and in the follow- 
ing order : Swansea, in 1667 ; Attleborough, in 1694 ; 
Cumberland and Barrington as it now is, and Warren, 
in 1746 ; Seekonk, in 1812 ; and Pawtucket, in 1828. 
Thus, to use geographically a genealogical figure, this 
old town has had three children and four grand-chil- 
dren, — all now living and doing well. The venerable 
mother, instead of one log-thatched church and thirty 
families, now has thirty-eight churches and thirty thou- 
sand inhabitants ; and, as oftshoots and adopted chil- 
dren, we cordially, in her behalf, extend to you all a 
maternal and fraternal greeting. 

Without time for anything like connected history, 
we can only slightly glance at a few of the leading 
events within the limits of this mother of towns. 
Here, for forty years, lived, and died, the venerable 
patriarch who was the first and sole white inhabitant 
of Boston, and who raised from English seeds the first 
apple in New England. Here, too, Roger Williams, 
[whose skeleton, by one of Nature's singular trans- 
mutations, now exists in w^ood,] built his cabin and 
planted his first and last corn, before going to settle 
the first free State in the world. (/) Here was shed 
the first blood in King Philip's war, and here was cap- 
tured the last of his commanders; and that direful 



38 



drama, wliicli for more than twelve montlis dreiiclicd 
New England in blood, and spread fire and devasta- 
tion in every direction, was opened and closed here. 
Twenty-nine of the men of this sparsely settled town 
were furnished for the army, thirteen of whom were 
in the great fight at Narragansett, in Khode Island ; 
and those who remained to take care of the wives and 
children, contributed four hundred and eighty-four 
pounds, five shillings and five pence, in all, for the 
support of that Indian war. These patriotic sacrifices 
were in all sorts of sums, from one shilling by Ebenezer 
Amidown, to one hundred pounds by Nathaniel Paine. 
The great city of New York was indebted to this town 
for special favors two centuries ago. After Manhattan 
had been settled by the Dutch, they were joined by a 
colony of English. This mixed people were without 
an organized government, and no man among them 
was fitted for the task. They harrowed the services of 
a citizen of this town, who understood Dutch and 
En*dish, and had all the other necessary qualifica- 
tions in an eminent degree. He straightened their 
difficulties, organized a good municipal government, 
and was unanimously elected the first mayor of the 
city of New York. He was re-elected ; and after serv- 
ing two years, thought he had got them trained so 
that they could manage for themselves, took leave 
of them, receiving their united benedictions, and re- 
turned to his family and home in this town ; and his 
grave is with us to this day; — the worthy Thomas 
Willett. (,/) The town has given birth to several 
very eminent men, and among them Benjamin West, 
the distinguished Professor of Mathematics and As- 



39 



tronomy in Brown University — a philosopher whose 
merits and reputation are co-extensive with astro- 
nomical science. 

There was another of " Nature's noblemen " amons: 
the original settlers of the town, whose grave is with 
us to this day ; — John Brown, who was elected and 
served as Governor's Assistant for seventeen years. 
He was the first magistrate in the United Colonies 
who raised his voice against coercive support of the 
ministry, taking the stand that all church support 
should be voluntary, and backed his precepts by lib- 
eral example. He was a man of abilities, intelligence^ 
'piety and patriotism, and was buried wdth military and 
civic honors in 1662. He has worthy descendants, one 
of whom is chairman of the Committee of Arrange- 
ments on this occasion. 

As we glide down into later periods, we are arrested 
by the fact that in the affairs of the Revolution this 
town acted a noble and patriotic part. The hatred of 
oppression and love of liberty coming in contact early, 
struck a spark that ignited the united hearts of this 
people, and continued to blaze, undiminished, till the 
completion of National Inde23endence. The town 
unanimously voted instructions to their representa- 
tives in the Legislature to resist, to the last extremity, 
and inch by inch, every act of aggression on the part of 
the British Crown. A letter of these instructions by 
the town's Committee of Correspondence, presumed 
to have been drawn up by its chairman, Ephraim 
Starkw^eather, breathes a s^Dirit of intelligence, judg- 
ment and patriotism, clothed in a soul-stirring elo- 
quence, but rarely to be found in the whole annals 



40 



of that great Revolution, and gave evidence that the 
seeds of the sublime eloquence of Otis found a con- 
genial and prohfic soil in the hearts of the people of 
this town. 

The drafts upon this town for men, for various peri- 
ods of military service, required two hundred and six, 
which were all answered promptly. The voluntary en- 
listments, for various terms of time, were one hundred 
and four. Thus the town furnished three hundred 
and ten of its men, from beardless youth to veterans 
in age, for the continental army, thirty-seven of whom 
served as commissioned officers ; and the records show 
but one single desertion from the post of military duty. 
Besides furnishing its portion of the supplies called for 
by the government for the military chest, the town 
voluntarily imposed heavy taxation upon itself for 
the comfort of its own absent soldiers ; and the inhab- 
itants also made voluntary contributions, six pounds 
of which came from this church, for the relief of the ' 
poor of Boston, sufferers by means of the Boston port 
bill ; and the treasurer of the Provincial Congress ac- 
knowledged the receipt of ten pounds from this town 
to help sustain the expenses of that body. Through- 
out the Revolution, the patriotic conduct of this people 
will bear an honorable comparison with almost any 
spot in the whole thirteen colonies, and deserves to 
be remembered in gratitude by all their descendants. 
And throughout all the past history thus glanced at, 
the town has been ample in its provisions for the edu- 
cation of its youth, as then compared with surrounding 
places ; and perhaps in this is to be found the secret of 
much of its early reputation and patriotic influence, {k) 



41 



But let us turn from these tedious locals, and pay 
a glancing tribute of respect to our common country, 
especially as this is her natal day. Such are the facil- 
ities of the present day, and for which we should be 
profoundly thankful, that the history of the Revolu- 
tion, and a good view of our subsequent annals, have 
become i familiar to the school-boys; but there are 
points in our colonial existence which may have too 
much escaped the attention of even "children of a 
larger growth." By this I mean, there is a sort of 
three-fold connecting idea, through which may be 
seen the gradual development of our childhood of 
colonial history, and our manhood in the final inde- 
pendent Union of this Republic. 

On the 11th of November, 1620, [old style,] there 
was drawn up, on the lid of a chest, on board the 
Mayflower, in Plymouth harbor, and signed by forty- 
one of the principal men of the first band of Pilgrims, 
a platform of civil government which, notwithstand- 
ing all the civic and ecclesiastic aberrations from it 
in later times, contained the elemental seeds of all 
that is now valuable in the civil polity of this great 
Western Empire. I think that the more that brief 
but comprehensive document is studied, and studied, 
too, in connection with the noble and most instruc- 
tive farewell discourse of John Robinson, their pastor, 
before they left Leyden, the more will this important 
and fundamental truth become apparent. (/) This is 
the first point in what I denominated a three-fold idea, 
the whole essence of which was, under God, kiiman 
freedom enshined in human progress. 

The second point in this progress was in 1G52 ; and 
6 



42 



it developed itself through the medium of coinage. 
The coinage of money has, in all nations, ever been 
considered a prerogative of the government ; and de- 
vices upon coin are intended as emblematic of some 
leading proclivity of the people. The first coin struck 
in North America, at Boston, in 1652, was intended as 
a Liberty coin. It was, in later times, and for special 
reasons, called the " Pine Tree Shilling," but it was no 
such thing; it was as bold an effort at a Declaration 
of Independence as they then dare make, and was 
founded on the following passages from the seven- 
teenth chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel : 

" Son of man, put forth a riddle, and speak a parable unto the house of 
Israel. And say, thus saith the Lord God ; a great eagle with great wings, 
long wings, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, 
and took the highest branch of the cedar : He cropped off the top, and 
carried it into a land of traffick ; he set it in a city of merchants : and it 
shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar ; and under 
it shall dwell all fowl of every wing ; in the shadow of the branches thereof 
shall they dwell." 

It is a quite remarkable feature in the Prophet Eze- 
kiel, that the success of man, under Divine Providen- 
tial blessing, is variously typified under the idea of a 
ring within a ring — the first as enclosing the acts of 
men, and the outer ring as the surrounding Providen- 
tial protection. We are now prepared to present the 
solution of this prophetic riddle as exhibited in this 
first coin, erroneously, but for reason of fear, called 
the " Pine Tree Sliilling," pence, and so forth. The 
coin has a cedar tree enclosed in a ring, with the word 
" Massachusetts " in an outer ring ; and on the opposite 
side, " 1652 : XII pence," in the inner ring, and " New 
England " in the outer ring, or between the two rings. 
This coin was thus struck in the time of the Common- 



43 



wealth, under Cromwell, when the restraints of mon- 
archy were hardly thought of in the colonies. They 
thought that they were a full grown, goodly cedar ; 
but they were too fast ; the time indicated in Ezekiel's 
riddle had not yet come. In a little time, Charles 
Second came to the throne ; monarchy was restored ; 
and they began to be fearful about their coin. The 
King's Commissioners reported it to him, but knew 
nothing about the riddle of Liberty contained in it. 
Sir Thomas Temple, who was well acquainted in New 
England, and a sound friend to the colonies, and yet 
a confident of the King, suddenly ameliorated much 
of the King's ill feeling from this encroachment upon 
his prerogative in coinage. The King asked Sir 
Thomas why they dared to coin money contrary to 
law? He took some of these shilhngs from his 
pocket, and showing them to the King, remarked, 
evasively, that these people knew but little about 
law ; that they were coined merely for convenience, 
not supposing there would be any objections. The 
King asked what tree that was? Sir Thomas told 
him it was the Royal Oak of Boscobel. [When 
Charles Second, in his attempt to regain his fatiier's 
throne, was routed by the army of Cromwell, at Wor- 
cester, he saved his life by hiding in the thick boughs 
of an oak tree at Boscobel ; and after his restoration, 
this tree acquired the name of the Royal Oak • and 
Sir Thomas Temple thus evasively called the tree on 
the coin the Royal Oak, in honor of his preservation, 
adding that they dare not put his name on, being then 
under the Commonwealth.] The King, smiling, said : 
" They are a set of honest dogs ; let them coin their 



44 



.sliillingR." And tliey continued to coin their shillings 
and pence, without much alteration, calling it an oak 
or a pine, as best suited their whim, only keeping out 
of siijfht the original secret of their cedar tree coin. 

There is wisdom to be learned from this second point 
in our three-fold idea of the development of American 
freedom. They were right, in the great outer ring of 
God's ultimate designs, in setting His eagle to crop the 
monarchies of the Old World and to replant the twigs to 
grow into Republics — setting the first example in our 
portion of the earth. But nations, like men, are some- 
times impatient and too fast. They thought the small 
twig plucked from the top of the prophetic cedar of 
Lebanon, and developed in the miniature platform of 
the Mayflower, had grown into a goodly tree at Boston 
in thirty-two short years, so that it could bear national 
fruit, and shelter, in its ample boughs, " all fowls of 
every wing;" or, in other words, welcome the op- 
pressed of all nations under their protecting shadow. 
But such was not the case ; the time had not arrived ; 
they had to do more than to " wait a little longer." 

. o i " Man, in feebleness, cnn plan. 

But God, in wisdom, executes." 

Their emblematic Declaration of Independence was, 
indeed, the still, small Vox Dei, but, in His wisdom, not 
then to be ratified by the Vox popidi ; but, after a cen- 
tury and a quarter more had rolled away, and Divine 
Providence had so shaped the affairs of men that all 
was ripe, then came, in thunder tones, the Vox Dei, 
ratified, in universal acclamation, by the Vox populi, 
and developed itself in the immortal declarative Char- 



45 



ter of our Liberties, read here to-day ; — and although 
they had no further need of the boughs of the cedar, 
having received the whole canopy of the stars as our 
immortal birthright, yet they retained the agent that 
cropped the twig, and commissioned his ever-expand- 
ing wings to hover over the down-trodden stranger 
from every clime, and to forever glitter upon our coin 
as an emblem of the great enigma of human freedom 
and human rights, {m) 

Such is the three-fold idea of the gradual develop- 
ment of the great problem of human rights, as seen 
in the summary of our colonial history. From the 
Declaration of Independence, eighty-four years ago 
to-day, the history of the growth and present ener- 
gies of our Kepublic is known of all men, and per- 
haps is well expressed, in a single word, by the term 
Progression. A progress in that art and skill which 
are essential to a nation's prosperity, — progress in that 
knowledo-e which Lord Bacon declares to be but an- 

o 

other name for power, — progress in those all-conquer- 
ing energies which have stamped their impress not 
only throughout our own land, but on the distant na- 
tions of the Eastern World, and unbarred the icy gates 
of the frozen North, — progress in all the elements of 
that civilization which is commanding the universal re- 
spect of the nations of the earth, — and progress in the 
knowledge and practice of Christianity, without which 
no nation can be permanently prosperous or happy. 

Such are the leading features of our Republic to-day. 
It is true that we can see the threatening penumbra 
of a dark cloud in the South, and hear the distant 
mutterings of a harmless thunder, and we can occa- 



46 



hiionally pee faint and unmeaning Hashes of political 
lightning ; but showers are refreshing to the land, and 
usually give us a purer atmosphere. It is not in the 
power of any men, or parties of men, to rend asunder 
our well cemented bond of Union, merely because it 
is not yet what we should all like to have it. We 
may be too fast in our anticipations, as well as the 
little nation of Massachusetts in 1652, when they 
coined their shilling. The halcyon days of a political 
millenium are not to be ex23ected till Divine Provi- 
dence sees best ; and we must be content to each one 
endeavor to clear his own skirts from all wrong, and 
" wait a little longer." This year we are only passing 
through one of our accustomed quadrennial political 
spasms, and before another twelve-month shall have 
rolled away, we shall again see a noble spectacle — a 
ceremony that makes thrones and diadems tremble — 
that of one national administration quietly and sub- 
missively laying down the robes of office, and another 
administration as quietly and calmly putting them on ; 
and all this mighty change, involving the interests of 
many millions of our race, at the simple will of the 
sovereign people, expressed through a harmless bal- 
lot, instead of a hostile bullet. 

Our Republic has hardly yet begun its career in 
the destiny assigned it. We are yet to pass through 
many more revolutions ; so that if the statesman of 
to-day could re-visit his native home a century hence, 
lie would search in vain for some of his now familiar 
institutions. But these approaching revolutions are 
not to be produced by the cartridge-box ; they will 
be achieved at the ballot-box, and under an increased 



47 



influence of the band-box. And although there may 
be politicians who would, if they could, blot out the 
principles of the founders of the Republic, and sell 
their immortal birthright for the potage of office, yet 
there is a recuperative moral power always held in re- 
serve, and equal to the emergency. To short-sighted 
and desponding men it has certainly appeared as if de- 
parted greatness itself had fallen into the hands of polit- 
ical degeneracy, and that even the principles and fame, 
and name and dust of Washington were to be driven 
into oblivion. But there is, in the providence of God, 

" A sovereign balm for every wound, 
A cordial for our fears ;" 

and the name and fame, and principles and counsels, 
and sacred dust of the revered Father of his Country 
shall be preserved, and exert their intended influence 
on unborn generations of men ; and for this we have 
an ample guaranty in the fact that woman, the cheer- 
ing solace in man's last extremity, — sublime woman, — 
now holds the keys of Mount Vernon. 

And now, Fellow-citizens, may that overruling Di- 
vine Providence whose protection has encircled the 
inhabitants of this ancient settlement throuo;h the 
sunshine of prosperity and storms of adversity for 
more than two centuries, still protect and bless you 
and your descendants, down the long vista of coming 
ages; and may the lessons of wisdom and fraternal 
influence which the motive of your gathering this 
day is so well calculated to inspire, be inscribed as 
with a sunbeam on the tablets of your town, and all 
its churches, and there leave its impress forever. 



APPENDANT NOTES 



[Note A. — Page 12.] 
Extract from the " Athene et Fasti Oxonienses," by Anthony 
Wood, Third London Edition ; now in Library of Harvard University : 

" Samuel Newman, a learned divine of his time, received education 
in this University ; but being puritanically affected, he left it, went into 
New England, became a Congregational man, minister of the Church 
of Rehoboth there, a zealous man in the way he professed, indefatigable 
in his studies, and marvelously read in the Holy Scriptures." 

This extract and a correspondence between Wood and Dr. Licrease 
Mather in 1690, contain some discrepant inaccuracies, but they have 
been carefully collated and corrected from the records of the Univer- 
sity, so that the sentence in the text contains the facts in a condensed 
form. [See said correspondence in Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. VII., p. 187, 
Third Series. 

[Note B.— Page 12.] 
This Dr. Featly was one of the brilliant scholars of his day, and Wil- 
liam Grouge was one of the ministers called the " Assembly of Divines," 
and was appointed one of the annotators of the Bible. They each wrote 
a prefatory advertisement, which is in the third edition of Newman's 
Concordance ; thus giving their high sanction to the merits of his Bibli- 
cal attainments. [See more of them in note on the Concordance, and in 
Lempriere's Biographical Dictionary. 

[Note C— Page 15.] 
Taking into view the then price of lands, the general price of mer- 
chandize, and annual cost of living as style was then, and it will be 

7 



50 APPENDANT NOTES. 

found that £500 was a larger estate than $20,000 would be now. 
Thus he was then ranked among then- wealthy men ; but he used it as 
becoming a meek, pious and humble christian, — aonsidering it in the 
light of a boon from heaven, with which he was bound to be kind, 
benevolent and charitable to the less fortunate of his flock. 

[XoTE D.— Page 16.] 

" This combination, entered into by the general consent of all the 
inhabitants, alter general notice given the 23d of the 4th month [July] . 

We whose names are underwritten, being, by the providence of God, 
inhabitants of Seacunk, intending there to settle, do covenant and bind 
ourselves one to another to subject our persons [torn off — probably, 
according to law and equity] to nine persons, or any five of the nine, 
which shall be chosen by the major j)art of the inhabitants of this plan- 
tation, and we [torn off — probably, promise and agree'] to be subject 
to all wholesome [torn off — probably, rules and regulations made] by 
them, and to assist them, according to our ability and estate, and to give 
timely notice unto them of any such thing as in our conscience may 
prove dangerous unto the plantation, and this combination to continue 
untill we shall subject ourselves jointly to some other government." 

(Signed,) * Walter Palmer, Ephraim Hunt, 

*p]dward Smith, Peter Hunt, 

Edward Bennett, *William Smith, 

Robert Titus, John Peren, 

Abraham Martin, Zachery Roades, 

John Matthewes, Job Lane, 

Edward Sale, *Alexander Winchester, 

Ralph Shepherd, *Henry Smith, 

Samuel Newman, *Stephen Payne, 

William Cheesborough, Ralph Allen, 
*Richard Wright, Thomas Bliss, 

*Robert Martm, George Kendricke, 

*Richard Bowen, John Allen, 

Joseph Torrey, WilUam Sal)in, 

James Clarke, Thomas Cooper. 

The orthography as in the original is retained in the above. 

Those marked thus * were the first chosen " townsmen," — in Decem- 
ber, 1643. and their first meeting as such, January 3, 1643, 0. S., 



APPENDANT NOTES. 51 

and Alexander Winchester was chairman. From a comparison of these 
dates and other circumstances, I suppose this compact was made at Wey- 
mouth, before the general migration, which most probably did not take 
place till the spring of 1644, 0. S.* These thirty names were nearly 
or quite all then heads of families, and may be considered as the original, 
actual settlers of Rehoboth, although there were nojj-resident stockhold- 
ers in the company, more or less of whom, at various periods, joined 
them as later residents. 

The phrase " uitendhig there to settle " will justify this view of the 
matter. 

Stockholders were those who participated in the expense of fixtures 
and unprovements, and not speculators in lands, so cheap that seven 
towns cost fifty shillings and a coat. [See Note F. 

[Note E.— Page 17.] 
For many of these early New England habits, see Sears's " Pictures 
of Olden Time," and Palfrey's Hist. New Eng., Vol. II. 

[Note F.— Page 18.] 

This town was originally bought of Massasoit, in 1641, for ten fath- 
oms of beads or wampum [money]. This was delicate shells strung 
like beads, and was the Indian currency. Their white they called 
wampum [white], and their black money they called suckauhock — seki 
being their adjective for black. This bead money was nine shillings the 
fathom in 1630, but, owing to the fall of tha price of beaver^in Eno-land, 
it was, at the time of this purchase, only five shillings per fathom ; so 
that this town cost £2 10s. of English money, and a coat which the chief 
made them throw in to boot. This trade was made at the house of Roger 
Williams, at Providence, he acting as interpreter. Thus the Indians, 
without a written language, transacted their business in "black and 
white " — especially their cash trades. [For Indian Coin, see Williams's 
Key, p. 128. 

[Note G.— Page 20.] 

These facts are gathered from a brief family record and notes wi"itten 
by his grandson in an old family Bible which I deciphered twenty years 
ago, and then almost illegible. 

*The year then commenced on the 25th of JIarch. 



52 APPENDAISTT NOTES. 

[Note H.— Page 33.] 
Mucli of this note is extracted from an able but too brief a paper read 
before the Old Colony Historical Society by its President, Hon. John 
Daggett. Such parts of it as are from his paper are here enclosed in 
brackets : 

[The work now exhibited to the Society is an interesting relic of the 
past. It is the third edition of Rev. Samuel Newman's " Concordance 
of the Bible." 

This Concordance seems to have l)een not merely a new work, but 
substantially an original work, and the author of it was a minister of 
the retired settlement of Rehoboth, about ten miles from the ancient 
Cohannet [Taunton]. 

Most of the first generation of ministers in the New England Colonics 
were learned men, educated at the Universities in England — at first, 
ministers of the Established Church, who, from non-conformity, were 
obliged to flee from religious persecution at home, and to seek an asy- 
lum in the American wilderness. Many of them were eminently prac- 
tical men, fitted by their varied experience in life to be the advisers, the 
guides, or the pioneers, of their flocks in these early settlements. Among 
them was Samuel Newman, who followed, or rather led, his people into 
the rough and hardy soil of Rehoboth, where an original settlement was 
formed in 1643, and where he remained in the laborious and faithful 
discharge of his duties as pastor of the first church for a period of twenty 
years. He died July 5, 16G3. 

He was a learned man ; and had a large library for that age. His 
English books wore appraised at £4 ; his other books at £18 ; by the 
latter I understand his classical works in the ancient languages. This 
library he bequeathed to his son Noah. 

Any one having an ordinary knowledge of books, must see at once 
that such a work required great labor, research and discrimination ; and 
leai-ned divines who have examined it, and are well qualified to judge of 
its merits, say that it is a work of great learning and ability, especially 
for that age, when Biblical literature was comparatively imperfect and 
lunited. It was a work of gi-eat utility ; not only in itself, but as laying 
the foundation for subsequent works of a similar character. In 1662, 
a short time before Newman's death, an edition of this work, somewhat 
altered, was published by the learned scholars of Cambridge University, 
England, at the University Press, which was afterwards known to the 



APPENDANT NOTES, 53 

public as the " Cambridge Concordance " — thus robbing Newman, the 
real author, of the reputation which belonged to him. A copy of this 
Cambridge edition is in the hands of the writer. Its title-page is " A 
Concordance of the Holy Scriptures; with the various Readings both in 
Text and Margin, by S. N. [ University Seal,'] Cambridge. Printed 
by John Field, printer to the Universitie 16G2." In the preface, 
however, the editor (whose name is not given) acknowledges that it is 
founded on Newman's work and his plan adopted. On comparing, it 
will be found that Newman's quotations are abridged. 

It is related of the author, that, while pursuing the work at Rehoboth, 
he was obliged, from the scarcity of materials for light in that infant set- 
tlement, to use pine knots for the purpose. 

It is justly a matter of no little satisfaction to us that the author of 
such a monument of learning and industry, should have completed it 
while he was an inhabitant of the Old Colony. 

Notices of this work are found in several of the ancient historians and 
writers. Mather, in his INIagnalia, says of him: "He was a hard 
student ; and as much toil and oil as his learned namesake, Neander, 
employed in illustrations and commentaries vipon the old Greek pagan 
poets, our Newman bestowed in compiling his Concordances of the 
sacred Scriptures." 

In the celebrated "Life of Hugh Peters," the work is erroneously 
attributed to Cruden, who did not publish his Concordance till about a 
hundred years after Newman ; the biographer evidently confounding the 
one with the other. " The Rev. ]Mr. Newman, an eminent scholar in 
the University cf Oxford, Eng., &c. This pious Clergyman with his 
pious companions, went and formed the settlement of Rehoboth. They 
built a Church and encircled it with a set of houses like a half moon, 
facing the west, where they worshipped the Creator with great devo- 
tion, and Newman taught their children the arts and sciences gratis. 
In that barren soil Newman spent a useful life, and made to himself a 
name in the Christian Church that will last as long as the Bible. There 
he formed the first Concordance of the Old and New Testaments, which 
was ever made in the English tongue. The energy and Herculean labor 
m this necessary Index of the Bible, even astonished both the Old and 
New World," &c., &c. 

In this edition, of 1G58, are two prefaces — one written by D. Featly, 
and the other, by W. Gouge. Some interest to us, attaches to their 



5-4 APPENDANT NOTES. 

names from their eomaeetion with Newman's Concordance. Who were 
they ? The first was doubtless no other than the famous Dr. Daniel 
Featly, a learned and distinguished divine in England. He was born 
at Chai'lton, Oxfordshire, March, 1582, and educated at Oxford, and 
was made fellow of Corpus Christi, 1602. He was distinguished as a 
theologian, and by his eloquence as a preacher, was appointed Chaplain 
to Sir Thomas Edmond, Ambassador to France, where he remained with 
him for three years. In 161.3 he was Rector of Northhill, Cornwall, 
Chaplain to Abbott, the Primate, and Rector of Lambeth. In 1617 he 
received the degree of D. D., and was promoted by his patron to the 
rectory of All-Hallows, London, which he afterwards exchanged for 
Acton ; and finally became the last Provost of Chelsea College, where 
he died in April, 1645. He was imprisoned in 1643, for his oppo- 
sition to the Covenant, and came near losmg his life. 

He was the author of " Oygnea Cantio,''^ 1629, and "the scholastic 
duel between him and King James," besides some forty religious works 
of a controversial character. 

William Gouge, the writer of the other preface, was also a distin- 
guished divine and author. He was minister of Blaekfriars. He was 
educated at King's College, where "he was remarkable for not being 
absent from morning and evening pi'ayers for nine years, and for read- 
ing 15 chapters of the Bible every day." He died Dec. 16, 1653. 
He was author of "The whole Armor of God," "Exposition of the 
Lord's Prayer," " Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews," and 
other religious works. [See Lempriere's Biographical Dictionary. 

He [Newman] had a large family of children. Among them was 
Samuel, Jr., supposed to be the oldest, who lived and died at Reho- 
both ; Antipas, the minister of Wenham, who married Ehzabeth, daugh- 
ter of Gov. Winthrop, and who died Oct. 15, 1672 ; Noah, who was his 
father's successor in the ministry, and who died April 16, 1678. His 
wife was Joanna, daughter of Rev. Henry Flint, one of the first minis- 
ters of that part of Braintree which is now Quincy ; Hopestill, a daugh- 
ter, born at Weymouth, Nov. 29, 1641, became the wife of the Rev. 
George Shove, the third minister of Taunton, and died March 7, 1674. 
They had five children — three sons and two daughters. Their blood 
still circulates in the veins of our neighbors ; their descendants arc in 
our vicinity. 

Mr. Newman made a will, which seems not to have haan discovered 



APPENDANT NOTES. 55 

by any of tlie liistorians or genealogists. The extracts which I have 
obtained from it S3ttle some heretofore doubtful points. His wife's 
name was Slbel. He appoints Stephen Fame, sen., Thomas Cooper, 
Lt. Hunt, " overseers to give advice to my distressed Widow." He 
names his three sons, Samuel, Antipas and JVoah, and three daughters. 
To Antipas he gives some ''land at Wenham,''^ and to his three daugh- 
ters £b each. Hopestill is mentioned by name. He gives ten shilhngs 
to his old servants, Mary Humphrey of Dorchester, Elizabeth Cubby of 
AVeymouth, and Elizabeth Palmer of Rehoboth, and the same amount 
to " Lydia Winchester, his present servant." 

Rev. Samuel Newman was buried in the Old Burymg Ground at 
Seekonk. His dust has there mmgled with his mother earth, but no 
monument marks the spot. A man of so much usefulness and distinc- 
tion in his day and generation as Rev. Samuel Newman, should not be 
suffered to remain without even the ordinary memorials of the dead — 
such as mark the last resting place of the most humble tenant of the 
grave. We often neglect the living and honor the dead ; but we some- 
times honor the living and forget the dead.] 

Thus fiir I have extracted from Mr. Daggett's able paper before the 
Historical Society. I will now correct a slight mistake or two in the 
above, and make some additional illustration in these matters. 

" A large family." He had three sons and one daughter [Hopestill]. 
The " three daughters " alluded to in the will are daughters-in-law, the 
wives of his three sons, a very common expression in those times ; and 
he gives them [in addition to what he had given their husbands, his 
sons,] £5 each, and ten shillmgs each to his former house-maids, as 
mere tokens of his kind personal remembrance of them, calling them 
" daughters," &c. The other general features of the will are sufficently 
correct as represented by Mr. Daggett. 

This third edition of the Concordance is very rare. There is a copy 
of it in the Athenaeum at Boston, presented by King William IH., as 
stated in gold letters on its cover. The copy which I possess is the one 
reserved by its author for his own use. It is a large folio, printed at 
London, 1658, in small, antique type, and contains 1370 pages. It 
has passed through the ownership of six different clergymen, and was 
presented to me in 1858, just two hundred years from the date of its 
imprint, by the surviving heii's of the late Rev. Dr. Wight of Bristol, 



66 APPENDANT NOTES. 

Rhode Island, at the suffeestion of Gov. Dimond and the Hon. Nathaniel 
Bullock, to wliose kindness and historic and antifj^uarian prochvities I 
am indebted for this interesting memorial of the past. 

From President Stiles's MS. diary : " Four very considerable men, 
Williams, Blackstone, Newman and Gorton, lived in a vicinity, with no 
connection and little acquaintance." — " Nov. 18, 1771. I lodged at 
Mr. Hide's at Rehoboth. [Rev. Ephraun Hyde, the seventh pastor.] 
He cannot recover any of Mr. Newman's MSS. ; he supposes they fell 
into tlie hands of the late Mr. Avery, of Norton, by a marriage con- 
nection." 

Comment. — Blackstone lived in Rehoboth, Williams in Providence, 
and Gorton was the factious controversialist at Warwick, Rhode Island, 
differing with pretty much everybody else, and sometimes differing with 
himself. Gov. Arnold, in his excellent history of the State, says he was 
the " veriest leveller recorded in history." The libraries of Blackstone 
and Newman were burnt by the Indians ; and there is no evidence of 
much written intercourse between any of these four ' ' very considerable 
men." With Gorton he would not be likely to have much intercourse ; 
but as there is no written evidence to the contrary, and as the other 
three were educated men, and were also men of enlarged and liberal 
views for those times, there is no doubt of there having been much more 
familiarity and christian courtesy between them than is warranted by the 
remark of Dr. Stiles. About the recovery of Newman's MSS., as 
alluded to by Mr. Hyde, I have made pretty diligent research, and the 
result is that there were none to recover ; — the conflagi'ation at Reho- 
both, March 28, 1676, by the Indians, seems to have settled that matter. 

The fragment of his papers containing the thirteen articles of his pri- 
vate platform [on page 23] first appeared in print in Mather's Magnalia, 
and was doulitless preserved through a copy permitted to be taken by 
some friend during its author's life time, and wliich afterwards fell into 
Mather's hands. The Latin epitaph on page 33, of which I have made 
a rather free translation, was also written by Dr. Cotton Mather, and is 
in his Magnalia. And here I desire to record my own impressions of 
Mather and his works, without prejudice, and without any desire to 
compromise the opinions of anybody else. Dr. Cotton Mather was a 
veiy learned man — a very pious man — a very talented man — a very 
good man, and an able theologian and preacher of the gospel, according 
to the standard of his times. But his mind was of that imaginative cast 



APPENDANT NOTES. 57 

which, without a rigid control, rendered him an unsafe historian and 
biographer. He would hastily grasp, as with the hand of a great mas- 
ter, the appearances that evidently clustered around a fact, and educe 
from them his supposed reality, without delving for the truth itself. 
He was inattentive to those small but important items — those minuti<B 
in dates, places and delicate colorings of events, which are the rubble- 
stones which must ever support the foundations of the structure of true 
history. His historic writings [especially his Magnalia] are such as we 
should hardly know how to do without, and yet such as we constantly 
feel that we dare not implicitly trust. The fact that the Magnalia, 
though professedly an English book, is contmually assaulted with hail- 
storms of Latin, was not peculiarly a fault of his — it was a fault in the 
taste of the age in which he lived ; and with all these faults, and much 
trouble as he has caused in leading subsequent writers astray, he will 
ever be entitled to the gratitude of his countrymen, and to an honorable 
place in the theologic and historic literature of America. 

At the close of this long note — the last on the founder of Rehoboth — 
perhaps it may be a convenience to some of my readers to refer them to 
the principal writers who have referred to, or more or less spoken of, 
Rev. Samuel Newman. 

[Wood's Athen. et Fast. Oxon., London. Jlather's Magnalia. Holmes's Am. 
Annals, Vol. I., p. 332, 333. President Stiles's Literary Diary. Coll. Mass. Hist. 
Soc, Vol. IX., p. 191, First Series. Slorton's Memorial; edited by Judge Davis. 
Allen's Biog. and Hist. Die. Elliott's Biog. Die. Bliss's Hist. Rehob. Farmer's 
Register; First Settlers of New England. Mass. Hist. Coll., New Series, Vol. VH , 
p. 187. Baylies' Plym. Colony, Vol. L, p. 816; Vol. H., p. 196, 209, 211. John- 
son's Wonder Work. Frov., Chap. X., p. 127. Prefaee to Cruden's Coneordance. 
Preface to Newman's Concordance, Third Edition of 1658, by Dr. Featly and Rev. 
William Gouge. Neal's Hist. Puritans, Vol. H., p. 315. Neal's Hist. New England, 
Vol. n., p. 341. Young's Chronicles Mass. History of Dorchester. History of 
Weymouth. Rec. Banbury, Eng. Rec. Oxford Univ., Eng. Rec. JMidhope Chap., 
Yorkshire, Eng. ; &c., &c. Many of these contain errors in dates, &c., copied from 
one to another, originallj'' started wrong by Cotton Mather; but some of them have 
been carefully corrected by the accurate researches made while in England by the 
Hon. James Savage of Boston, to whom, for many favors, I have long been under 
lasting obligations.] 

[Note I.— Page 37.] 
On opening the grave of Roger Williams, in the spring of 1860, no 
remains were found except a good representation of his skeleton formed 
of the roots of an apple tree. The root had stretched itself some dis- 
tance to reach the grave, in search of the elements of its own subsist- 
ence, such as the phosphate of lime, into which the bones had resolved 



58 APPENDANT NOTES. 

themselves, in the exact shajie in which they were Oiiginally buried. 
And as the root consumed the remains, it assumed the appearance of a 
human skeleton made of apple tree root. When some one present en- 
quh'cd why there were no other remains, the reply was that the owner 
of the orchard had been eating him up in the form of apples. [See a 
very able paper on this matter, read before the Rhode Island Historical 
Society, May 18, 1860, by Hon. Zachariah Allen, L. L. D., in which 
tliis curiousjmt rational development of some of Nature's recondite laws, 
is philosophically and eloquently illustrated. 

[Note J.— Page 38.] 
Would it not be an act of justice, as well as an act of credit, to the 
now populous and wealthy city of New York — the first commercial city 
on this Continent — ^to erect a plain, simple but substantial memorial 
over this lonely grave of their very worthy first mayor ? 

[Note K.— Page 40.] 
For many of the statistics in these passages, I am indebted to Bliss's 
history, from which I have condensed them. The author of that valua- 
ble history of the town, though led astray in some matters as to dates, 
&c., by earlier writers, should long be held in grateful remembrance. 
With the then scanty and widely scattered materials, he performed a 
seiTice for his native town which can never be over-estimated ; and if 
he were hving now, and could be benefited thereby, I should rejoice in 
an opportunity here to say more ; — honor and peace to his memory. 

[Note L.— Page 41.] 

The following is a verbatim copy of the original platfonn of govern- 
ment at Plymouth. [See Gov. Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, p. 89. 

In y" name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-writen, the 
loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by y" grace 
of God, of Great Britauie, Franc, & Ireland king, defender of y* faith, 
&e., haveing undertaken, for y" glorie of God, and advancemente of y° 
Christian faith, and honour of our kiug & countrie, a voyage to plant 
y'^ first colonic in y" Northerne parts of Virginia,* doe by these presents 
solemnly & mutualy in y^ presence of God, and one of another, covenant 

*The term Virginia, in the compact above, was the name used before that of 
New England. The farewell sermon of John Robinson, their pastor, in Leyden, 
alluded to in the passage to which this is a note, may be found in the First Volume 



APPENDANT NOTES. 



59 



& combine our selves togeather into a eivill body politick, for our better 
ordering & preservation & furtherance of y" ends aforesaid; and by 
vertue hearofto enacte, constitute, and frame such just Sf equall lawes, 
ordinances, acts, constitutions, 8^ offices, from time to time, as shall be 
thought most meete ^ convenient for f generall good of y" Colome, 
tmto which toe promise all due submission and obedience. In witness 
wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd y'' 11. of 
November, in f year of f raigne of our soveraigne lord. King James, 
of England, France, & Ireland y-^ eighteenth, and of Scotland y^ fiftie 
fourth. An": Dom. 1620. 

Miles Standish, 
Isaac AUerton, 

Samuel Fuller, 

John Alden, 

*Christopher Martin, 

*Wilham MuUms, 

Stephen Hopkins, 

Edward Dotey, 

Edward Leister, 

Francis Cooke, 

*Thomas Rogers, 

*John Ridgdale, 

*John Turner, 

*James Chilton, 

John Billmgton, 

John Goodman, 

*Thomas Williams, 

*Edward Margeson, 

*Richard Britterige, 

Edward Gardiner, 

*John Carver, 
Those marked with a star thus * died the first year. The first person 
who stepped upon the landing rock, at the general disembarkation, was 
Mary the daughter of James Chilton, who afterwards married John 
Winsiow, son of Edward. John Billington was [ten years after] hung 
for murder, but left respectable descendants. 



William Bradford, 
Edward WLnslow, 
Wilham Brewster, 
John Howland, 
George Soule, 
*William Wlilte, 
Richard Warren, 
*Edward Tilley, 
*John Tilley, 
*Thomas Tinker, 
*Edward Fuller, 
Francis Eaton, 
*John Crackston, 
*Moses Fletcher, 
*Degory Priest, 
Gilbert Wmslow, 
Peter Brown, 
*Ptichard Clarke, 
*John Allerton, 
*Thomas English. 



of Mather's Magnalia. [The italicizing is not in the original of the compact, but I 
have marked those words on which I based my remarks in the Oration.J 



60 APPENDANT NOTES. 

[Note M. — Page 45.] 
For a further illustration of this coinage, see Historical Magazine. 
Vol. III., p. 197, and Thomas HoUis's Memoirs, p. 397. A rather 
captious reply to the above article in the Magazine, appears in the same 
volume, p. 316, but the argument used is a felo de se. I have a good 
and well preserved specimen of this coin, and nobody acquainted with the 
fii'st limb or twig of " treeology " would ever dream of its being a pine. 



CONCLUDING NOTE.— [Personal.] 
I here embrace an opportunity to try to correct some wide spread 
mistakes. In the course of my genealogical labors, I receive many 
letters addressing me by the title of Jiev. How this practice came into 
use I do not know ; but as my name is sometimes alluded to by my 
friends in the public journals, I suppose the mistake was made by some 
one inadvertently associating my name with that of Rev. Samuel New- 
man, the founder of Rehoboth, and from whom I am a lineal descendant. 
Nor have I any very high opinion of the application of the sacred title 
of reverend to men. My only apology for using the term in reference 
to others, is in deference to a long standing custom, rendering it almost 
a necessity in definite description. The term reverend is used but once 
in the Bible, [Psalms cxi., 9,] and there it is applied to the Supreme 
Being, alone ! Do we rob God ? or do we claim an equality with Him ? 
one or the other seems inevitable. I have not, nor never had, any claim 
to such title. Nor is my name Samuel — a name by which I am often 
addressed. The name my sainted mother gave me is on the title-page of 
this humble production, and has never been altered ; and any additions 
or appendages thereto, have been made by the voluntary, unsolicited acts 
of others. 

In very early life I was left an orphan, and without education, prop- 
erty or friends to help me to instruction. I had an early proclivity for 
little books, which gradually extended itself for larger ones ; but the 
calls of life could only be answered by daily manual labor, and all book 
progress was necessarily slow, fettered and limited, although the hours 
which Nature demands for sleep have been too often encroached upon 
throughout the past half century. For whatever of Science, Philosophy, 
History, Literature, or attainments in any of the departments of human 
learning, I may possess, (and I am often credited with much more than 



APPENDANT NOTES. 61 

I merit,) I am indebted only to the blessing of Heaven and tbe common 
kindness and sympathy of my fellow men, as I have lived thus far in 
life without a teacher. I am a graduate of no school except a small 
childrens' school taught by my mother ; yet, for reasons best known to 
herself. Brown University saw fit to pick me up as a sort of isolated 
sheep from the more favored flock, and generously conferred upon me 
one of her Honorary Degrees. 

In religious matters, I am an outsider to every variety and shade of 
religious organization ; yet I am no infidel, nor am I a disrespectful or 
inattentive observer and listener at rehgious meetings. In none of my 
by-gone editorial writings, in no book, pamphlet, letter or docmnent 
written by me tlu'oughout my past life, have I ever left a single word 
that could be construed into any disrespect or want of veneration for the 
christian reUgion or for God, whether I see him revealed in the Scrip- 
tures or geometrizing in the rainbow ; but, on the contrary, I respect, 
admire and love, with what I believe to be a christian impulse, all I see 
praiseworthy, pure and good in all men, with no desire to take note of their 
faults. My worship is summed up in the Lord's Prayer, and my creed 
is reducible to eight small words : " Cease to do evil ; learn to do well." 

Li earlier life, the physical sciences and moral and intellectual philoso- 
phy, were among my most congenial pastimes ; but, in later years, anti- 
quarian and genealogic investigations are my favorite pursuits ; and I 
have many thousand families of the present and past, in systematic 
arrangement, — a vast collection, which is designed as a deposit in the 
archives of the State of Rhode Island, for the benefit of the future. 

I am aware that it is not commendable for one to say or write much 
of himself; but if I had died yesterday, and my labors and papers ever 
been deemed worth overhauling, not a paragraph of autobiography would 
have ever been found among them. Under these circumstances, and to 
correct the mistakes alluded to, perhaps I may be excusably indulged in 
this brief exposition. And I only here desire to add, for the benefit of 
the youth and young men of this favored age, that although the most 
protracted life of man is but a moment in the great cycle of Time, yet, 
independent of all the legitimate calls of life, there is a large amount of 
surplus time that may and must be devoted to something ; — what that 
something is, their future destiny will faithfully illustrate and develope. 
Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. Vir. 



62 



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FULL AND COMPLETE llErOllT 

OF TUR 

• ECCLESIASTIC AND CIVIC 

BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

AT SEEKONK, [the Ancient Rehobotii,] 

JULY 4, 18G0. 



[PKKrAREU AT THE REtiUBST OK TBK COMMITTEE.] 



HISTOEICAL CELEBRATION. 



In' the month of May, 1860, a meeting of the Congregational 
Church at Seelconk was holden to take into consideration the 
subject of projecting some sort of a celebration of the ancient 
settlement of that town and church. 

A Committee of Arrangements were chosen, and the whole 
matter placed in their hands, — the Committee requesting their 
pastor. Rev. Mr. Barney, to sit with their body as an advisatorj 
member. After extending invitations to such as they desired 
to take part in the exercises, and receiving their replies, the 
Committee issued the following public notice as a programme of 
their intended celebration : 

ECCLESIASTIC AND CIVIC CELEBRATION, 

AT SEEKONK, MASS. 



It has been proposed that the Religious Societies and the Citizens of 
Seeliouk and the seven towns of which the ancient Rehoboth has been 
the nursing Mother, should hold a friendly, religious and patriotic gath- 
ering at the orIg"nal Congregational Churcu thereof, at Seekonk, 
on July 4th, 1860, at 10, a. m., for the purpose of commemorating the 
orlg'n and historic scenes of the ancient R3hobofch, [now S3ekonk], and 
of passing in review the life and character of its orlg'nal founder, and of 
paying re3p3ct to th3 ever m3morable birth-day of our Common Country. 

That this gathermg may be simple and unostentatious, and yet befit- 
ting a religious and patriotic people, the following brief Programme has 
10 



74 THE CELEBKATION. 

been adopted, excluding powder and other emblems of War, while at 
sunrise and sunset the peals from the Church Bells will " ring out " 
their respects for the National Anniversary. 



ORDER OF EXERCISES, 
I. 



Invocation to the Throne of Grace by Rev. Constantine Blodgett, D. D., 
Pastor of the Congregational Church of Pawtucket. 



DO 

II. 



Reading of select portions of Scripture by Rev. A. H. Stowell, Pastor 
of the First Baptist Church at Seekonk. 

HI. 

Music and Hymn by the Choir. 

IV. 

Prayer by Rev. James 0. Barney, present and tenth Pastor of this the 
original Church, and who will also conduct the exercises. 

V. 

Reading of the Declaration of Independence by Hon. Johnson Gardner, 
a native of the town, and descendant of one of its early settlers. 

VI. 

National Ode by the Choir. 

VII. 

Historical Oration by S. C. Newman, A. M., of Pawtucket, a native of 

the ancient Rehoboth, and lineal descendant in the seventh 

generation from its founder and first Pastor. 

VIII. 

Original Hymn written for the occasion. 

IX. 

Remarks and Benediction by Rev. David Benedict, D. D., of Pawtucket. 



At the close of the services, the company will repair to a temporary 
Pavilion near the Church, where [at a moderate price] all who desire it 



THE CELEBRATION. 75 

can join the festive board and partake of refreshment and the enjoyment 
of enlightened sociality ; and all who have a taste for this class of historic 
gatherings, without distinction of party, creed, sect or sex, and especially 
those descendants in neighboring States, the ashes of whose ancestral 
forefjithers repose in the ancient Cemetery connected with this venerable 
Church, are hereby invited to mingle in these sacred and patriotic 
festivities. 



JOSEPH BROWN, 
ROBERT M. PEARSE, 
JOSEPH B. FITTS, 
ISAIAH HOYT, 
WILLIAM ELLIS, 



Committee of 
Arrano-ements. 



Note. — Several interesting antiquated relics of this people, more than two cen- 
turies ago, will be exhibited on this occasion. 

W^ith this announcement, printed in circulars with correspond- 
ing envelopes for convenience, and in the newspapers in the vi- 
cinity, the Committee entered upon the discharge of their duties 
•with intelligence, ability and energy ; and their success will be 
best told in the following account of the result, compiled prin- 
cipally from reporters of the press, (for whom the Committee 
furnished special accommodations, both in the church and at the 
dinner,) commencing with the remarks of the very able reporter 
[E. R. Gardiner] of the Providence Evening Press, issued on 
the afternoon of July 5.* 

While our Providence streets were the scene of the din and 
discomfort inseparable from a city celebration of the Fourth, it 
was a pleasant fortune to escape from them and participate in a 
more quiet and more pleasurable mode of paying respect to the 
national anniversary provided in a rural suburb. The broad and 
grassy plateau of Seekonk, venerable with historic interest ; its 
ancient church and cemetery, containing monuments that now 



*Justice requires us to say that the several journals there represented, viz : the 
Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle, Pawtucket Observer, Providence Post and Press, 
Boston Journal, and some others, all published able but more or less condensed 
reports ; and in this description we have drawn more or less from them all, with- 
out being able to credit them in detail. 



76 THH CELEBRATION. 

show the date of 1653 ; its romantic loveliness of scenery, its 
neat dwellings, its gay pavilion and its happy group of people, 
from distant towns and States, returning to do honor to the 
founders and the historic scenes of their ancient birth-place, 
presented a spectacle long to be remembered by those who wit- 
nessed it as it yesterday thus appeared. Never was more ap- 
propriate place or occasion for such re-union, and never were 
the details of a memorial meeting better planned or more suc- 
cessfully carried out. In the judicious selection of speakers and 
the felicitous manner in which they performed their duties ; iu 
the well-timed sentiments and the excellent and abundant cheer 
that was provided ; in the numbers and the enthusiasm of the 
participants ; in the feeling of deep reverence for the past exci- 
ted, and in the loveliness of the day, all was a complete success. 
Such interesting festivities have perhaps never before been known 
in Seekonk ; never probably were its bright fields and pleasant 
drives so well and so extensively appreciated as yesterday. The 
daeds of the men associated with these scenes in early days were 
vividlj' brought up in review before their descendants who had 
assembled from the seven towns of which the ancient Rehoboth 
has been the nursing mother, to commemorate the fame of a no- 
ble ancestry. A deep impression pervaded all that they were 
indeed standing on classic ground, and they united as those who 
might never meet again in paying tribute to the virtues and 
exploits of their fathers as exhibited on that soil two hundred 
years ago. 

At an early hour, crowds of people began to gather from the 
neighboring towns and villages, and although the railway station 
was near the location, — putting the place in connection with the 
surrounding country, — yet there were visible at one time, eight 
hundred and five family carriages on that broad plateau. It 
was by far the largest gathering ever witnessed there since the 
settlement of the town ; yet such was the admirable arrange- 
ments of the Committee, that not a g\:n, nor even a single pow- 
der-cracker, was fired, nor the least appearance of intoxicating 
liquors or unbecoming behavior witnessed throughout the day. 



THE CELEBRATION. 



77 



in all that sober, reflective, contemplative and yet eminently 
cheerful multituile. 

The first part of the exercises, those announced in the pro- 
grara'.ne, Avas held in the Congregational Church ; and at 10 
o'clock, A. M., the appointed time, the venerable edifice was 
filled to overflowing. The invocation for Divine assistance was 
by Rev. Constantine Blodgett, D. D., Pastor of the Congre- 
gational Church at Pawtucket. The reading of select portions 
of Scripture was by Rev. A. H. Stowell, Pastor of the First 
Baptist Church at Seekonk, and were appropriate selections read 
from a Bi'ole printed at Geneva in 1608, and brought by Gov. 
Bradford in the Mayflower in 1620, now two hundred and fifty- 
two years old. A fervent and very appropriate general prayer 
was offered by Rev. James 0. Barney, the tenth and present 
Pastor of this ancient church, who also conducted all the exer- 
cises in these services by introducing the different participants 
at the proper time and place. The Declaration of American 
Independence of July 4, 1776, was read in good style by Hon. 
Johnson Gardner, now of Pawtucket, but a native of Rehoboth. 
The Oration of the day was delivered by S. C. Newman, A. M., 
of Pawtucket. It occupied about two hours in its delivery, but 
was of sufficient interest to command the closest attention of the 
audience throughout. The Oration was both ecclesiastic and 
civic, according to the programme, and the audience gave evi- 
dence that the orator of the day had acceptably performed the 
task assigned him. 

The following original hymn written for the occasion by Rev. 
William M. Thayer, of Franklin, Mass., was sung after the 
conclusion of the Oration : 



Wliat voices from the silent past, 
In whispers clear and low, 

That tell <it precious seerl broad cast, 
Two hundred years ago ! 

When first the Saviour's herald true 
• ame o'er the ocean wave. 

Here to erect an altar new, 
And here to tind a grave. 

Tlirice blessed they — the fathers all— 
Wlio sulTered. toiled and prayed. 

And at the JIaster's early call, 
These sure foundations laid I 



Thrice happy we — their children here- 
Who share their labors now, 

And worship God with hope — nor fear 
Where first they made their vow I 

Long where the sainted fiithers trod, 
May we guard well the dust 

Of hira who taught in faith for God I 
A dear and sacred trust. 

And when in turn our lives are spent, 
And tear drops o'er us flow, 

May we ascend where Newman went, 
Two hundred years ago. 



78 THE CELEBRATION. 

Spirited and tasteful music was set to these hymns by Dea. 
D. B. FiTTS, formerly of Seekonk, but now organist at the Con- 
gregational Church in Holliston, Mass., who also wrote an origi- 
nal piece of music for the original hymn on this occasion ; and 
the singing was beautifully executed by a choir of twenty-five 
well trained voices, [Dea. Fitts presiding at the organ,] the 
whole being under the direction of Daniel Perrin, Esq., of 
Seekonk, a gentleman who exhibited ample qualifications for the 
task he was called to sustain. 

Kev. David Benedict, D. D., of Pawtucket, to whom had 
been assigned the Benediction, prefaced that service with the 
following brief but appropriate remarks : 

" I am always pleased with such anniversaries as this. I like these re- 
unions of the widely dispersed members of a town. I like these efforts to 
preserve the ancestral association of this, the ancient town of Rehoboth, 
including what are now seven towns within a territory of ten miles square 
purchased of the great Massasoit, the friend of Roger Williams. It has been 
the nursery of piety and intelligence, fruitful in talent and worthj' in its 
moral character. A day like this — so fruitful in honorable and christian 
development — will, I trust and believe, remain among our most cherished 
recollections to the end of life. And now, maj' that overruling Heavenly 
Protector, who has guided the barque of our forefathers over the stormy seas 
of their probationary trials, and conducted them, as we believe, to the man- 
sions of eternal rest, be still our Protector to the end of life, and to the same 
final triumph, through His Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.'''' 

These services in the church were of a most interesting char- 
acter, and were listened to with uninterrupted attention by an 
audience of twelve hundred people, including a very large num- 
ber of men of mark in the literary, theological and political world. 
And every part of these historic and patriotic exercises was, by 
the visibly apparent smiles of Heaven, executed in exact accord- 
ance with the original programme of the Committee, and evinced 
their ability in all their arrangements. 

the dinner. 

A large and beautiful pavilion, providing dining accommoda- 
tions for more than a thousand people, had been erected near 
the church, to which the congregation next betook themselves 



THE CELEBRATION. 79 

for the enjoyment of the pleasures of the festive board and of 
enlightened sociality. The tables were most tastefully and boun- 
tifully spread, and the tent proved none too large for the guests. 
After the company were seated, the Divine blessing was invoked 
by Rev. Perez Mason of Boston. 

The dinner was prepared under the management of James M. 
Bishop, Esq., of Seekonk. Every seat was occupied ; he had 
enough for all and to spare, and if hundreds had to wait a second 
table, none were allowed to go away hungry, whether with or 
without one of his thirty-eight cent tickets ; and such were his 
most admirable arrangements, in point of assistants, &c., that 
but one plate and four tumblers were broken, among all his table 
•ware, during the whole process until everything was finally re- 
turned to its place ; and in addition to order, quietness and social 
comfort, the dinner, in a pecuniary point of view, more than real- 
ized the most sanguine expectations of the Committee. 

After the feast of material good things had been disposed of, 
the guests prepared themselves for the enjoyment of the intel- 
lectual part of the entertainment, consisting of appropriate sen- 
timents and responsive speeches, which formed one of the most 
delightful features of the occasion. The President, Rev. James 
Dean of Pawtucket, who gracefully presided at this festal board, 
announced the intellectual feast in a brief but eloquent speech, 
and closed by introducing George Owen Willard, Esq., Editor 
and Proprietor of the Pawtucket Observer, as toast-master for 
the occasion. The toasts and responses were as follows : 

The first sentiment was — 

TTie Congregational Church oj SeeTconk — She this day welcomes the children of 
the ancient Rehoboth to the old homestead. 

Rev. James 0. Barney, the present pastor, ordained in 1824, 
responded as follows : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Honored, as I feel that I am, to stand in the place of the tenth and 
present pastor of this ancient and venerable church, it is my privilege 
and pleasure to extend to you her most cordial, christian salutation. 



80 THE CELEBRATIOir. 

Though years have passed away since she entered upon her third 
century, she is still as hale and healthful as ever, and this day reports 
herself to be the mother of seven towns, thirty-eight churches, and moro 
than thirty thousand living descendants. 

We, who are the immediate members of her family, this day welcome 
you all to the " Old Homestead ;" the identical spot wh^ere our Puritan 
fathers and mothers mot, more than two hundred years ago, to pray, to 
praise and worship God. 

We meet and greet you as brothers and sisters, withoat reference to 
party or sect. And as wo look over this great and orderly assembly, 
gathered from so many States, towns and churches, our hearts swell 
with emotions of love, and prompt us to say, " Behold oui- mother and 
sisters and brothers." 

Gathered as we are, we deem it a fitting occasion to render thanks to 
our Heavenly Father that we are the children of those pious parents, 
who, on these sacred grounds, ofFired prayers that reached up to the 
throne and affected the heart of God, and procured for us the richest 
blessings in His gift. 

And now, dear friends, as brevity and good sense are to be the order 
of the table, and as we know of nothing that more fully and briefly ox- 
presses our feelings toward you, we close our welcome by invoking upon 
you all this Divine benediction [Numbers vi., 24, 25, 26] : " The 
Lord bless you, and keep you ; the Lord make his face shine upon you, 
and be gracious unto you ; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, 
and give you peace." 

The second sentiment was — 

The Earhj Settlers of New England— They feared God rather than man. 

Rev. Perez Mason of Boston responded to this sentiment in 
the following manner : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

My father was born on this spot, ninety years ago. When three years 
old, he was earned by his parents to Grafton, New Hampshire, where 
the country was to poor that if the doctrine be true that people receive in 
this life punishment for their sins, they must have been grossly wicked ! 
I have seen the tears course down his cheeks as he told the tale of the 
poverty and distress of that noble-hearted band of men and women, the 



THE CELEBRATION. 81 

early settlers of liis adopted town. There they struggled wltli piuii and 
poverty ; and all the cradle they had for years, was one-half of a hollow log. 
But they overcame these obstacles, and a few of the family yet remain. 

But, Mr. President, amid it all, I feel honored, doubly honored, in 
being permitted to be present with you on this occasion. Here some of 
the early settlers of New England had their trials and conflicts, but their 
unyielding reliance on God for protection enabled them to triumph. 
IMay their postent>/ never tliink less of God and tlie Bilile. 

You not only had among them, Sir, your ministers, your physicians 
and your jurists, but you also had poets ; and well do I remember one 
of the efforts of one of those rustic bards which was taught me ]jy one 
of my ancestors nearly fifty years ago. The young man was burning a 
coal-pit then not far from where we are now assembled, and going from 
here to Providence, he purchased a quart of new rum. On his way 
back, he hnbibed so freely that he became intoxicated, and fell into his 
coal-pit and came near being burned to death ; and after having par- 
tially recovered, he perpetrated the following verse, in which there is 
probably more truth ihsiU poetry : 

" A quart of rum from Providence come ; — 
And through that sin, I plainly see, 
The pit did funk and I got drunk, 
And that's the eend of me." 

But, aside from these simplicities, I rejoice that so much of the puri- 
tanic spirit is here to-day. Theirs was a spirit of stern integrity ; and 
in listening to the Oration to-day, we found that Rehoboth was on hand 
in the Revolution, to furnish her quota of men to defend the liberties of 
the country. 

As a descendant from Old Rehoboth, I am glad to be here. And I 
thank God that many of my ancestors were men who feared Him and 
kept His commandments. I feel honored in the privilege of mmgling 
in these festivities, and in paying our respects to this venerable mother 
of seven towns. God bless her. 

The third sentiment was — 

The difficulties encountered and overcome by the early settlers of New England, 
though formidable in their nature, and apparently well calculated to discourage 
and dishearten the most sanguine, yet those very difficulties and obstacles gave a 
tone to the character of those early adventurers and their posterity, that has made 
New England what she is. 
11 



82 THE CELEBKATION. 

Rev. William M. Thayer of Franklin, Mass., (author of the 
" Bobbin Boy,") who was expected to respond to this sentiment, 
being absent, Rev. David Benedict, D. D., of Pawtucket, re- 
sponds as follows : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Under the circumstances arising from the absence of the gentleman 
expected to respond to the sentiment liere given, I may reasonably be 
permitted to make a few brief remarks, in a somewhat different direction 
from what I should if I had intended to make a special response to that 
comprehensive field of historic truth. 

I am well pleased with celebrations of this kind, and particularly with 
the rapidly increasing efforts which are now so generally being made to 
collect and preserve the record of the doings, the trials and the suc- 
cesses of our New England ancestors, — a labor which has been too much 
and too long neglected by almost all classes of the American people. 

Although I cannot trace my pedigree to the first settlers of Old Re- 
hoboth, and have no ancestral claims to a relationship with that worthy 
band of men, yet for more than a half century I have been on very inti- 
mate terms with a portion of their descendants. In 1804 I became a 
resident of Pawtucket, [on the Massachusetts side of the river,] which 
was then within the limits of the venerable town whose bi-centennial 
anniversary we this day celebrate. Here I found a small but godly 
company of the members of this famous community, who united with 
the few members of my own order [Baptists] in sustaining religious ser- 
vices m the only house of public worship then in that place. These 
people became my steady hearers and supporters until a church of their 
own order [Congregationalists] arose in that place, — an offshoot from 
this venerable parent church. With the ministers of this wide spread 
town and its vicinity, I frequently exchanged pulpits; and I have 
preached in the double-galleried meetmg-house described by the orator 
of the day. Thus such an intimacy was formed with this people, that I 
do not come here as a stranger on this joyous and praiseworthy occasion. 

And besides, I claim to be a representative of a somewhat numerous 
portion of the population of this originally widely extended town, in 
which many of our faith have lived and died ; and from which, at differ- 
ent times, no inconsiderable numbers of this class of men, [Baptists,] 
both mhiisters and laymen, have performed important services m other 
regions to which they have emigrated. 



THE CELEBRATION. 83 

Ephraim Starkweather, Esq.,* the very talentefl gentleman so truth- • 
fully alluded to in the Oration to-day, was the founder of an important 
and highly respectable family in that part of the ancient Rehoboth now 
called Pawtucket. He was one of the substantial members of the com- 
munity to which I have referred. He was a native of Connecticut and 
a graduate of Yale College. From this very intelligent and worthy 
christian citizen, I learned the leading facts of the history of Newman 
and his adventurous associates, and of the transactions of those men 
with Massasoit, the famous Indian chief, the early and firm friend of 
Roo:er Williams, — the o-reat outlines of those times I learned from Mr. 
Starkweather, long before the valuable labors of Daggett and Bhss were 
published to the world. 

I had, in my earliest years, formed a very favorable opinion of the 
Old Plymouth Colony, within whose ancient boundaries we are now 
assembled, and this opinion was strengthened and confirmed as I became 
more and more acquainted and familiar, in later life, with the records 
and character and christian liherality of this ancient people. f 

With regard to the toast, to which I have not even attempted to re- 
spond, I have only time and strength to say : That the evidences of 
" the difficulties encountered and overcome " by our forefathers, are 
universally spread over the early history of New England ; they were 
the schools in which the perseverance, the honor, the integrity and ulti- 
mate standard of liberality of our far-famed New England character was 
formed — a character which has left and is yet to leave, and permanently 
stamp, its impress on the unborn States yet to belong to our glorious 
Union of confederated members of this great Republic, whose birth we 
this day also celebrate. Those obstacles, overcome by the toil of perse- 
verance and high-toned trust in Grod, will long shine as beacon lights for 
the stimulation of a laudable pride of nationality to the intelligent future. 

But, Mr. President, I must close, and only beg leave to add, that the 
non-sectarian character of this glorious festival fully appears in the pro- 



*That gentleman lias a grandson, Hon. Samuel Starkweather, now living in 
Cleveland, Oliio, late one of the District Judges of that State. A great-grandson, 
James Oliver Starkweather, Esq., is now Cashier of the Slater Bank at Pawtucket. 

There is a fact relating to this Ephraim Starkweather of Eehoboth which is not 
much known in history, and it is this : Gov. John Hancock, while the storm of 
British oppression was lowering over New England, called to his side a board of 
l)rivate Councillors, as confidential advisors, and this Mr. Starkweather of Eehoboth 
was one of Hancock's choice, and served in that private but honorable capacity. 

tSee page 26. s. c. n. 



84 THE C E L E li II A T I N . 

•gramme of your Committee, and their admirable execution of it ; and if 
I were to offer a sentiment, it would be something like this : 

The grave is the sepulchre of all human creeds : and beyond it will be the entire 
harmony of all their pious advocates. Fiddi certa intrcvs. 

The fourth sentuTient was — 

The Early IHgtonj of this Qilonij—lt awakens au honest pride in the hearts of 
the people. 

Hon. John Daggett of Attleborough, President of tlie " Old 
Colony Historical Society," responded in the following manner : 

Mr. President, Ladles and Gentlemen : 

I am happy to respond to such a sentiment as the one just proposed. 
It is worthy of remembrance on this occasion. The Plymouth Colony — 
the " Old Colony," as we familiarly call it — ^has become a great historic 
name. It will fill a noble page in history ; and, as the population of 
this country flows westward from the Pilgrim shore, the Old Colony 
looms boldly up to view, and will ever be a prominent object through 
the vista of the Past. There is the old, lowly home of a great nation — 
there, its birth-place. 

The general character of the Pilgrims should be held up to coming 
generations in everlasting remembrance. They were the unconscious 
founders of a great Western Empire. As the swelling population of 
this country expands and spreads itself over a vast continent, the fixme 
of the Pilgrims will go with it, and " grow with its growth and strengthen 
with its strength." 

Yes, we are proud to claim such an ancestry — to belong to the land 
of the Pilgrims. You are natives of the Old Colony. This ancient 
t'»wii, whose birth you have met to celebrate, was included in the limits 
of this time-honored colony. You are assembled on sacred ground, — 
standing on Pilgrim soil, — that land to which history will look for the 
foundations of our institutions and the germs of great events. 

The founders of the Old Colony were fitted to carry on, successfully, 
tlie apparently humble, but eventually great enterprise for which Provi- 
dence had designed them. They were men of f lith and men of courage. 

They were men of genuine faith and trust in Providence, or they never 
would have forsaken, as they did, their native land for conscience' sake 
— that land t(i which they were bound by the ties of kindred and h(tme. 



THE CELEBRATION. 85 

It was a tryino; moment when, in the frail Mayflower, they, exiles though 
they were, looked for the last time, with eyes bedimmed with tears, on 
the green fields and white shores of England — that " clear old England," 
the home of their fathers and the home of their own childhood ; they 
never would have severed those ties nor quit those scenes endeared to 
them by so many associations, to meet the perils of a wide ocean and an 
unknown world, if they had not been moved by a great moral power, — 
with hearts trusting in Providence, — sustained by an unfaltering faith, — 
men who valued conscience above all other things. If they had not been 
of such a stamp, they would not have turned away from the comforts 
and endearments of their native land, to banish themselves to the then 
uttermost parts of the earth, and to plant their homes in the wilderness. 

They were also men of true courage, or they never could have faced 
the dangers and endured the trials to which their situation exposed them 
during the early periods of their history. The public and private his- 
tory of their lives furnishes decisive evidence of this fact. There were 
many occasions during their colonial existence wliich " tried men's souls." 
Their readiness to meet danger and death in their most appalling forms 
was fully tested in the bloody scenes of Philip's war, which swept with 
such terrible destruction over the infant colony. Within our own limits 
was the scene of the most disastrous and hard-fought battle of the whole 
war, in proportion to the numljers engaged. One of its severest blows 
fell upon the settlement around the very spot on which we stand, in the 
destruction, by the torcli of the enemy, of the dwellings of the settlers. 

You have all read the sad story of " Pierce's Fight;" how with his 
sixty-three English and twenty Cape Indians he passed over these Plains 
with his little army, doomed so soon to perish on a bloody field ; how 
on his passage through th« place he was joined by five of our townsmen, 
and all went in search of the foe, who were supposed to be in tlie vicin- 
ity ; how they courageously attacked the enemy and pui-sued them till 
they were drawn into an ambuscade and were finally surrounded by more 
than five times their own number. They were thus completely encom- 
passed by the enemy. They must then have known their fate. Tiiere 
was no retreat and no quarter — it was victory or death ! 

At the commencement of the fight, Capt. Pierce formed his men into 
a circle "double-double distance all round," so as to present a front to 
the enemy in every direction. There and thus they stood for nearly 
three hours m these appalling circumstances, till almost every man fell 
either dead or wounded ! This was a test of tlieir couraa-e. Even the 



86 THE CELEBRATION. 

coward, wlien surrounded liy the "pomp and circumstance of glorious 
war," inspired by the enhvening strains of martial music, and attended 
by numerous hosts, may rush boldly onward in the hour of battle, but 
here our friends had no external aids — nothing to sustain them but their 
own brave hearts ! Well did the old clu'onieler call this battle-ground 
the "Bed of Honor." Honor, then, to the memory of the brave men 
who thus died in defence of their firesides and their homes. To be de- 
scended from those men is a prouder title of nobility than 

" All the blood of all the Howards." 

The orator of the day has alluded to some of the eminent men that 
have been born in Rehoboth. Within this plantation was l)orn one per- 
son who has presided over Yale College ; another who has been Chief 
Justice of our Supreme Court ; Benjamin West, a distmguished Profes- 
sor in Brown University, whose name is co-extensive with astronomical 
science ; Dr. Nathan Smith, a man eminent in literature and philosophy. 
All will remember the name of Maxcy, who was born within the limits 
of Rehoboth, President of three colleges, one of the most eminent moral 
philosophers, and one of the most brilliant pulpit orators of his day. 

This is a family gathering — a meeting of the descendants of the early 
inhabitants of Rehoboth. Shall we call the roll of the revered dead ? 
Did time permit, it would be interesting to read over the names on the 
list in the presence of their descendants. Some one here present could 
respond to almost every name on it. Every one of tae founders of 
Rehoboth is probably represented here to-day. 

Oh, that I could, by some magic art, or rather, by some Divine power, 
recall the forefathers of the town from their sleep of two hundred years, 
and restore them, for a brief time, to then* eaithly homes, and here let 
them pass in review before us in their antique costumes, with their Puri- 
tan manners and customs ; let them here meet tlieir children face to face ; 
let them cast a new glance over these once familiar places of their earthly 
pilgrimage ; let each venerable form, as he enters and surveys the assem- 
bly, recognize his own children in the names and the features we bear ! 
What a strange vision to them ; how interesting to us ! And how changed 
the scene from the early days of the Pilgrims ! Here is the Great Plain, 
once encircled by the " ring of the town;" above is the same blue sky 
and smiling sun ; and there are the bright waters of the Narragansett. 
But all else is changed ; all other things have become new ! The log 
house, the red Indian, the interminable forests, have all vanished. 



THE CELEBRATION. 87 

Forever honored be those who, with brave hearts and unwavering 
faith, — patient to endure so many sufferings, and to meet so many dan- 
gers, — came here to subdue the wilderness, and to pknt, on these 
beautiful shores of the Narragansett, the institutions of Religion, and 
Learning, and Freedom — that priceless heritage which you, their chil- 
dren, are now enjoying ! Their remains repose in that old Burying 
Grround within our sight, and have long since returned to their native 
dust ; but tfiey still live in these their children — in tlie names you bear — 
in the example of their lives ; — in the principles which they have trans- 
mitted to you ; they still live in that influence which lingers around to 
hallow these scenes of their -earthly pilgrimage. Grod bless their memory. 

The fifth sentiment was — 

The Clergy of Ancient Eeliobotli. 

Rev. CoNSTANTiNE Blodgett, D. D., Pastor of the Congre- 
gational Church in Pawtucket, responded to this sentiment in 
the following appropriate remarks : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

You can scarcely be aware of the task which you have assigned, in 
your call upon me. You have called me to retrace through all the past 
of the ancient Rehoboth, the character and mfluence of a succession of 
humble, modest men, who pursued the " even tenor of their way " 
among the successive generations of this rural population. How shall 
I measure the influence, how weigh the moral power, of these ministers 
of the gospel — whom many, even yet, persist in regarding as httle better 
than a series of town paupers, for whose support the town has been 
chargeable from year to year ? 

But, Mr. President, there is a great law of social and moral influ- 
ence, under the action of which it may be seen that the clergy of this 
ancient town have been a power among this people, and have left a 
record, alike honorable to themselves and to the wisdom and grace of 
Grod, who called them into such a ministry. By office and position they 
have l^een benefactors in many ways, and to a degree which we may 
fail adequately to estimate. 

And yet there are two lines of illustrative argument by which we may 
make, in a measure, obvious and appreciable the benign influence of the 
men who liave filled the place of ministers of religion among this people. 



0» THE CELEBRATION. 

One line of such argument is, to suppose that from the beginning 
there had been no such class of men in the town of Relioboth. Sup- 
pose there had never been a Sabbath observed, a sanctuary erected, a 
sermon preached, a prayer offered in public assemblies of worship, at 
marriages or at burials. What kind of a town would tliis have become ? 
What had been the character of the people 't What the state of educa- 
tion '? What the progress in learning, arts, sciences, and all the amenities 
and adornments of a christian civilization ? What would have been from 
year to year the value of real estate in the towns into wliich the ancient 
Rehoboth has been partitioned ? What would be the value of real estate 
this day under such a regimen ? We instinctively close our eyes on the 
gloomy reality. We dare not picture to ourselves the results of such 
an experiment in civil, social, moral and religious training. Ye minis- 
ters of the altar of Grod ! we honor your memory ; we embalm in our 
grateful hearts your holy lives and your manifold works of love for the 
blessing of your own generation and the generations following ! Blessed 
are ye, and blessed shall ye be among men, — to the praise of the glory 
of Divine grace ! 

The other line of illustration is this. Let every minister of religion 
be this day banished from all these goodly municipalities into which 
ancient Rehoboth has grown. Let every meeting-house be demolished, 
and a solemn and perpetual covenant be enacted that there never shall 
be another minister of religion, another sanctuary, another sermon, an- 
other public or social prayer, in all future years. What would be the 
effect of such a measure upon the present condition and the future pros- 
pects of this population? What would become of our moral, benevolent, 
religious, social and educational institutions ? How would fare our in- 
dustrial pursuits ? What would be the effect from year to year on the 
value of these farms and goodly homesteads, where the fathers dwelt 
and prospered and worshiped in their day ? How would the grand list 
of the towns stand from one decade of years to another ? 

Think out the true answer to such questions, and you will agree with 
me in the conclusion that we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the 
clergy of Rehoboth, and to that Grod who appointed them to such 
ministry. 

But who shall attempt to measure the magnitude of the results which 
they achieved, when we rise to a view of the influence which they have 
exerted on the spiritual and immortal interests of those who have Hved 
and died under tlieir ministrations, and been sharers in the priceless 



THE CELEBRATION, 89 

benefits which they were enaljied to bestow on their contemporaries, and 
throuo;h them, on after generations? 

On the Inroad fields of eternity, our illustration must find its comple- 
tion. Into that blessed state we may not follow them now. But in it, 
may we ourselves read their completed histories, and learn to bless God 
anew for the works and benign influence of the " Clergy of Ancient 
Rehoboth." 

I only add that it would not become me to attempt to speak of the 
personal character and attainments and labors of men so far removed 
from our day as are the Newmans and their successors in the ministry. 
Of the sacred learning of the elder Newman, we have heard from the 
orator of the day. We may suppose them all to have been sound, able, 
learned men, qualified for the high functions of their office, and com- 
mending themselves to men's consciences, m the sight of God, by their 
holy lives and their public teachings, drawn, in the true Protestant 
method, from the oracles of revealed Truth. 

Be it ours, who have entered into their labors and embraced from the 
heart their Protestant faith, to imitate their virtues, and to reverence, 
cherish and obey that sacred Word, of wliich they were such devout 
students and such able expounders. Thus may we, and those who come 
after us, stand accepted before the God of our fathers, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

The sixth sentiment was — 

The Medical Profession of Ancient Eehoboth. 

Doct. Benoni Carpenter of Attleborough responded to this 
sentiment as follows : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It is good for us to be here to-day. We all claim to be directly or 
indirectly, as I suppose, the descendants of Old Eehoboth ; and if there 
be one sentiment stronger than another, if there be one internal instinct 
more potent than all others, it is where a man desires at some time in 
his life to return to the spot that gave him birth. I claim, Mr. Presi- 
dent, to be one of the dnect and lineal descendants of the first William 
Carpenter, who lived over on the other side of this Conunon. Though 
born in a different county, I deUght to be here, and to see so many of 
the Old Rehoboth people surrounding me. And, Sir, I suppose from 
12 



00 THE CELEBRATION. 

the sentiment that I am expected to answer particularly for the medical 
profession that originated in this town ; and when I say this town, 1 
mean witliin the limits of Old llehoLoth, ineludmg this town and the 
towns surrounding. Were I to go into details in relation to these men, 
my task would be a difficult one, for whatever else Rehoboth has been, 
it certainly has been exceedingly prolific in physicians. I can do no 
more in this connection, nor is it proper that I should so do, than sim- 
ply give you the names of the medical men who have originated in this 
town. I will begin first with that part of Rehoboth now designated 
Seekonk. 

The first physician in this town of whom I have any knowledge (and 
the knowledge I have of him I obtained from my grandmother, who 
died one hundred years old,) was Dr. David Turner, residhig in the 
southern part of Rehoboth proper, near Palmer's River — a j)hysician of 
the soul and of the body ; a preacher on the Sabbath, administering to 
the moral and religious necessities of men, and during the remainder of 
the week taking care of their physical health. He was a man of a good 
deal of wit and a good deal of sensitiveness, a man very much esteemed 
by the people of his time. He died in 1757, aged 63. 

Dr. Thomas Bowen, who hved near the time of Dr. Turner, was also 
a distinguished physician, as well as a mihtary colonel. 

One of the first physicians of this town of whom I have any knowl- 
edge was Dr. Joseph Bridgham. From him descended the Bridghams 
of the adjacent city ; and then' name has spread from this town over 
different parts of the coimtiy. 

One of the most distmguished names in science, especially medical 
science, but not limited to that entu'ely, — a name known all over New 
England for the energy of its bearer, — was that of Dr. Nathan Smith. 
He originated in that part of Rehoboth near the residence of Dr. Whit- 
marsh, in the southern part of this town. A poor boy, he fought his 
own way along through life. He had an especial taste for surgery, and 
became Professor of Surgery in Yale College. After continuing there 
in that capacity a great many years, he left and founded the medical 
department in Dartmouth College. He was the father of scientific sur- 
gery in New England. Nearly all his descendants were physicians. 
One died in the city adjacent nearly a year ago. 

Another physician origmating in this town was Dr. Daniel Thurber, 
born not far from Newell's Tavern. He studied medicine and settled in 
Bellingham, and was extremely endeared to his people there. There 



THE CELEBRATION. 91 

may be those here wlio knew his value among those who employed him, 
and how greatly he was lamented when he passed away. 

A family of physicians originated in this town by the name of Bunn, 
who were men of great celebrity, and practiced, I think, in Providence. 

Another name was that of Dr. Levi Wheaton, who also originated in 
Rehoboth, in the southeast part of what is now Seekonk. I will say of 
him, in passmg, m the language of Pope, — 

" An honest man's the noblest work of God." 

If I was ever acquainted with a man whom I believed to be strictly and 
purely honest, and whom I believed to be devoted to his profession, 
who did everything in his power, l^y study and scientific research, for 
the pui'pose of mitigating the sufferings of mankind, that man was Dr. 
Levi WTieaton. 

Another name known to this town was Dr. Ridley. He practiced 
during the Revolutionary war in the army. He was a man of a great 
deal of eccentricity, and not remarkably well acquainted with the insti- 
tutions of this country. I remember attending a patient m some part 
of the town where he had previously been visiting. The man had 
wanted him to take his pay in corn, and shelled out to him all the pig 
corn. The old gentleman was not pai'ticularly well pleased. But by 
and by the same man was sick again, and sent for the Doctor to attend 
him. Pie did not get well, but kept lingering along in his ilhiess for 
some time, and finally said to the Doctor, " What is the reason I do not 
get well faster'? Here I am, unable to get about, and yet I have been 
under your treatment for a long time." " Never mind," said the Doc- 
tor, "I am only trying to work that ])ig corn out of you." 

Dr. Hutchings, who died a few years since, and Dr. Allen, of whom 
I knew but little, were among the earlier physicians in this vicinity. 

This town also gave rise to several men of the medical profession by 
the name of Bucklin. One of them went Soutli, and died on his way 
to Texas. Another was settled in Holliston ; while a third was settled 
adjacent to this place, and some of us attended his funeral a few years 
since. 

I would not forget to mention in the catalogue of medical men who 
have orisfinated in Old Rehoboth, the name of Miller, of whom I need 
say nothing to any citizen of this vicinity. 

In the town of Rehoboth proper, the name of Fuller occurs to me as 



92 THE CELEBKATION. 

about the first physician that practiced here — a man of skill and emi- 
nence, especially as a surgeon. 

The name of Bullock is also prolific in physicians. One venerable 
man of that name, who resided in the southwestern part of the to^Ti, 
lived to be one hundred years old. 

Dr. Robertson studied medicine with Dr. Blackington, and after- 
wards went to Boston and became an eminent physician in that city. 

The Drs. Blanding — I might mention several of them of that name — 
originated in this town. One I must allude to particularly, who studied 
medicine here in Rehoboth with Dr. Fuller, settled in Attleborough, 
and afterwards passed to Camden, South Carolina, where he practiced, 
and became an eminent scholar in natural history. A few years before 
he died, his cabuiet of natural history was probably larger than that of 
any single individual in the United States. The specimens he left in 
Camden, where he died, are beautiful and elegant, and would repay 
any individual who takes an interest in that branch of study for making 
a journey there to view them. 

I now come to my own name, which I would not mention but for the 
fact that it has been wonderfully prolific in physicians. Rehoboth proper 
has given rise to certainly eight physicians of the name of Caq^enter, 
and how many more I do not know. A very considerable branch of 
the Carpenters in Vermont originated in this town of Old Rehoboth. 
There are a good many of them who are likewise physicians. 

Pawtucket gave rise to Dr. Billings, who afterwards left and went to 
Mansfield, and died in that town. Dr. Davenport also practiced and 
died in this town. Dr. Manchester was another. There is also the 
name of Dr. Stanley of Attleborough. Swansea also gave rise to a 
hereditaiy race of physicians — grandfather, father and son all living 
together at the same time. The elder was a hundred years of age while 
the younger was livmg. I know but very httle of others in that town 
except the Winslows. 

In addition to these names, there may be mentioned as among the 
physicians of the past, Drs. Fowler, RodlifF, Bliss, Bolton, Thayer, 
Wheelock, Johnson and Hartshorn, each of whom were ornaments to 
the medical profession. 

There is one fact which I very much delight to be able to mention 
in relation to the medical men who have originated in Rehoboth, and 
that is, their perfect exemption from quackery from the beginning to 
the end. However scientific they may have been, (and certainly some 



THE CELEBRATION. 93 

have been very much so,) or however mucli they may have been want- 
ing in science, one thing they have been true to, and that is, the opinion 
that a profession that has existed hundreds and thousands of years must 
of necessity, from all the knowledge thus transmitted, be a little more 
learned and scientific than the little windfalls of to-day and yesterday. 
They have generally pursued that course that has made them an orna- 
ment to theii- profession and a blessing to hmnanit}'. 

Allow me. Sir, in closing, to offer the following sentiment : 

Old Rehoboth, in he)' broadest domain — ]^ay she continue to be, as she has been, 
productive of good men and beautiful women. 

The seventh sentiment was — 

The Legal Profession of Ancient Rehoboth. 

Simeon Bowen, Esq., of Attleborough, responded in the fol- 
lowing manner : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

Convened as we are on this anniversary of our national independence, 
in the shade of yonder sacred and venerable chui'ch erected to God, and 
on this fair and level plain ; basking as we are to-day in the rich sun- 
light of a glorious civilization ; rejoicing as we do in the rich fruition of 
a thousand blessings — the blessing of peace with all nations, the blessing 
of free schools and of the general diffusion of knowledge, the blessings 
of a free government, of a pohtical confederacy of States enjoying civil 
and religious liberty — it becomes us now and here to look both to the 
past and the future, and to consider by what means, agencies and influ- 
ences we have reached this national felicity of position, and by what 
instrumentalities our present glory and prosperity may be augmented 
and perpetuated. 

It is, Mr. President, a little more than two centuries ago that these 
ftur and cultivated fields which we behold to-day rejoicing in peace and 
plenty, and smiling with fruits and flowers, were only a dark and almost 
impenetraljle forest, inhabited only by wild beasts and by roving tribes 
of rude and warlike savages. 

A Httle more than two centuries ago it was that an immortal vessel, 
the Mayflower, with her precious freight of human souls, was fii'st moored 
in Plymouth harbor ; and then and there the Pilgrim Fathers, our ven- 
erable ancestors, destined, under Divine aid, guidance and protection, to 



94 THE CELEBRATION. 

inaugurate a more glorious civilization than the world liad ever before 
l)eheld, first stepped foot upon our shores. Then and there, as ever 
true to tlieir noble mission and to the dictates of their consciences, they 
went forth into the wilderness, under an unpropitious wintiy sky, to 
meet and battle with trials, disasters and difficulties. 

And with what success was their enterprise and achievements attended ? 
Before their omnipotent amn the forest receded ; under their wise ordina- 
tion, government was instituted, schools established, churches erected, 
and towns and villages sprung up as if by magic. Fully imbued with 
religious zeal, stern in morality, rigid in virtue, patient in toil, brave in 
the midst of dangers, ardent, earnest and hopeful, they went onward in 
their great enterprise conquering and to conquer, and there laid broad 
and deep the foundations of a mighty empire. Heroically they lived, 
heroically they died; and, dying, they bequeathed to their descend- 
ants and to us, their posterity, a rich heritage — the glory they achieved 
and brought with them, and the distinguished example of piety and vir- 
tue, patience and fortitude and courage. And when I ask to-day, Mr. 
President, what influences and agencies have contributed to make New 
Eno-land what she now is m morality, intelligence, prosperity and glory, . 
I would pomt, with reverence and gratitude, to the Pilgrim Fatliers. 
They passed away, and their descendants, fired vnth the spii-it of the 
fathers, took up the work laid down by them in death, and pushed it 
on to a glorious triumph. 

We have met here to celebrate this day upon which our fathers adopted 
the Declaration of Independence, and to commemorate the virtue of those 
patriots who there enrolled their names. We have come up here to 
kindle anew the fires of patriotism on the altars of Freedom, and declare 
anew our devotion to the cause of Liberty, to renew our mutual pledges 
of fidelity to the Constitution and the Union. 

But, Mr. President, I was called upon to respond to a sentiment, — 
" The Legal Profession of Ancient Rehoboth," — and this may seem like a 
di<yression from my proper course of remark. I will say, there have been 
those who were the representatives of that profession within the town of Re- 
hoboth, though I think their numbers small compared with the other pro- 
fessions enumerated by those who have spoken before me. There have 
been but few whose names I can now recall. There is one who is now 
among the hving who was, a few years ago, an humble attorney within 
the borders of these towns. Upon these plains he had his office. Now 
he is in honor, and held the last term of our Superior Court at New 



THE CELEBRATION. 95 

Bedford. I refer to the Hon. Ezra Wilkinson. Others have gone out 
from this town who have shed lustre upon their profession, and have 
served and adorned then" day and generation. 

There is one question which partakes of the nature of an equitable, 
constitutional question, that it may not be inappropriate to allude to on 
this occasion. And, Mr. President, I would refer you for a moment, 
not with the intention of discussing the matter to any length, but briefly 
refer to it as a question of local interest, and one for the mention of 
which the day is not too good. I allude to the question of the bound- 
ary line between this venerable Commonwealth and the State of Rhode 
Island. There is an attempt made that a portion of our good old town 
of Rehoboth may be severed and given over, ceded, granted to the State 
of Rhode Island. Mr. President, it is improper that I should dwell 
long upon this subject. But it seems to me a fit occasion to refer those 
who are here present as representatives of those towns which are inter- 
ested in this question, as a subject worthy of thought. Modern Reho- 
both to-day will protest against such a procedure on the part of those 
two States. Seekonk has been inclined, by her action in town meeting, 
and Rehoboth too, I think, to grant even more than our bountiful Com- 
missioners awarded of our territory to Rhode Island. In the first place, 
IMr. President, I should object, on the part of Rehoboth, that this thing 
should ever happen. I protest against it for this reason, that Rhode 
Island has no legal, equital^le and constitutional claim to any of the soil 
of Seekonk. In the next place, I should protest against it for this rea- 
son, that it was not intended that a portion of this old town could ever 
be received and granted to a foreign jimsdiction. Our fathers gave up 
to Seekonk a portion of this territory bounded on the west and south 
by the Pawtueket River and Providence River. There are benefits, 
privileges and immunities which belong to modem Rehoboth which they 
are very loth this day to rehnquish. I do not believe that such a result 
as has been intended by certain citizens in this vicinity will ever happen. 
I hope for better things. I hope that these towns will ever remain 
together. Although they are separate by different town governments, 
yet they are one in eveiything that makes up a happy community. 
They may be distinct like the billows, yet they ai'o ever one like the 
ocean. One in a common l)rotherhood ; one for the Union ; one in 
reverence for and obedience to the laws ; one, in short, in everything 
that makes a virtuous, happy and ])rosperous people. 



96 THE CELEBKATION. 

The eighth sentiment was — 

Kiiowhdije and True IieU(jion — The safeguards of American Liberty. 

Hon. and Rev. Sidney Dean, ex-member of Congress from 
Connecticut, now Pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church at 
Pawtucket, responded as follows : 

3fr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I am a son of Connecticut, a genuine, old-fashioned Connecticut 
Yankee, and probably her only representative present, and, in her 
name, I thank you for this kind invitation. It has been generally sup- 
posed that a Connecticut Yankee carried about with him, in one pocket, 
a whetstone, and in the other, a handful of sharpened pegs, which he 
wished to "dicker" off as oats, and that, in general terms, he was a 
sharp trader. But do not be frightened ; I do not intend to ask any of 
you to trade jack-knives. [^ voice — All we want now is some of your 
tricks.] We learn those after we come to Massachusetts, and are capi- 
tal imitators. 

While listening to the able historical Oration of our friend, Mr. New- 
man, upon the men of marked ability which this ancient and honorable 
town of Rehoboth has given to the world, and also the professional re- 
sume and classification by the gentlemen who have preceded me at this 
table, I have almost wished that I had been born in Rehoboth myself. 
It would be an honor to any man to find his birth-name em'olled among 
such a list of eminent fellow townsmen, filling as nobly as they have the 
different professions. But I can claim a Massachusetts relationship, for 
my honored mother was a Plymouth woman, in regular lineage from the 
Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and my revered father was a Taunton man, 
and, with the usual pride of Tauntonians, in the time of herring fishery, 
if asked where he came from, could say, " Taunton, Good Lord !" 
And thus I claim a kinship with you all. All the idol worship I ever 
performed in my life, was performed over a piece of granite rock broken 
from the great boulder upon which the Pilgrims landed, and which I depos- 
ited years ago among the treasures of the Connecticut Historical Society. 

The eood old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, God bless her ! She 
is one of the brightest stars in the whole American galaxy. There is 
nothing that is sohd in morals, high-toned in honor, beautiful in affec- 
tion, sterling in education, brave in patriotism, that can excel the old 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 



THE CELEBRATION. 97 

I know Massachusetts and her leading sons well. It is an honor to 
be born, to live or to die upon her soil. Her people are intelligent, 
educated, generous and brave. I have had the honor to stand by the 
side of her selected Representatives, in seasons of trial and of mad ex- 
citement, when it retpired a cool head, a steady and a hon courage ; 
and I know that, for high-toned purpose, courteousness of bearing and 
true heroism, they bore the pahn proudly. I have seen them stand just 
like anvils to the stroke of the sledge, without flinching a hair, but giv- 
ing back the true ring of the genuine metal. The race of great men 
will never die out of the " Old Bay State," for it will take a thousand 
generations to perceptibly dilute her Puritan and patriot blood ; and I 
trust she will stand in her integrity until the foundations of the ever- 
lasting hills are finally removed. 

The toast to which I am called to respond is a great truism. Per- 
haps I should have reversed the order of statement if I had written it, 
if by "knowledge" the author of this toast meant scientific acquu-e- 
ments only. In our history, the church preceded the school-house, and 
the minister the schoolmaster. True rehgion was the basis upon which 
our civil, and I may also add, our political education was reared. I am 
not a betting man, but so prominently is this fact in our history, that I 
would wager a fortune against a dime, that if any considerable body of 
the descendants of the Puritans — say these citizens of Hehoboth — were 
to emigrate and settle a township upon some part of our great West, 
they would take a meeting-house and minister with them. The school- 
house would follow as a necessity ; for where the heart is right, it will 
crowd its great powers uj) mto the brain, and demand tor it the education 
of the school-room. A christian people is perforce an educated people. 

The Puritans found in the Bible the great foundation principles of all 
personal, social and political rights. In their structure of government, 
they differed with the rest of the entire world. The governments of the 
world were monarchical, either absolute or Hniited, but they all em- 
braced the fundamental idea of the rightful exercise of power by one 
man over another. Our govermuent was based upon the freedom of 
the individual. And the nearer we approximate that, the more simjile 
and perfect will be the governmental machinery. Governments are a 
necessity, but should only be constructed to preserve intact the individ- 
ual rights of all within the limits of their jiu-isdiction. The moment 
government becomes a power to rob the individual citizen of one of his 
inherent and social rights, that moment it has adopted the monarchical 
13 



98 THE CELEBRATION. 

basis, and the tendency is to a monarchical machine. The principles 
which underHe the two systems, constitute the great rock of difference 
between the government established by our fathers, and those of the 
Old World. 

The early English Puritans learned these primaiy truths by studying 
the Bible at the side of their hearth-stones, and in its exposition by their 
venerated ministers at their covenant gatherings. It was upon English 
soil that this conflict began, and it culminated in Magna Charta, in the 
reign of John, in the year 1215. That instrument, the basis of all 
English freedom, from which our Puritan fathers copied, and upon which 
they improved, embraces four points, all strUcing at despotic power, and 
enlarging the area of individual liberty : 

1. The sacredness and perpetuity of the right to the writ of habeas 
corpus upon the part of the people. 

2. The trial of an accused person by a jury of his peers, and no 
conviction without the evidence of credible witnesses. 

3. The freedom of every person to travel in and out of the Kingdom 
at pleasure, except in a time of war. 

4. No taxation without representation, the people, in the persons of 
their chosen representatives, having the control of the purse. 

These were the great landmarks of all liberty ; and under these, the 
British government has stood up as a bright light to the Old World. 
What is the difference between France and England"? I know we 
sometimes think how strange it is that the volatile Frenchman should 
be always in trouble, brave as he is and hon-hearted as he is. Do you 
not know that nowhere in the history of the French government has it 
learned the great lesson that for a nation to be free, the individual citi- 
zens must be free m every particular ? It has waded through seas of 
gore ; its guillotine has been perfectly baptized, time and again, with 
the blood of the flower of France, in the great washings of its national 
sins, and yet it has never reached that sublmie idea of the perfect and 
complete liberty of the individual citizen. Neither has Russia learned 
it ; and Italy is even now testing the pi'oblem, under the leadership of 
the brave Garibaldi and his compatriots. Whether she has sufiicient 
of the Puritan in her composition to give her permanent success, time 
alone will determme. 

I cannot, in the few moments allowed me, mark the points of im- 
provement in our own republican form of government. Thank God, 
the American people learned this great truth early. But the moment 



THE CELEBRATION. 99 

we depart from it as a national policy, and set up a class that shall hold 
the power to control the rights of the people, that moment our galaxy 
will go down to its bloody baptism of death. 

This is Freedom's natal day, and our festivities are natural, and must 
meet the approbation of every patriot. But, as christians and philan- 
thropists, let us pause in our rejoicings, and in remembering that we 
have four millious of slaves upon American soil, drop a tear over their 
sad condition. Their individuahty is utterly annihilated. They are 
the governed, without a voice in the character of the government. To 
them, our system is tlie most absolute and odious of monarchies. The 
system of chattelism is not a legitimate offshoot of our repubhcan princi- 
ples, but a barbarous excresence, fastened upon us in spite of its incon- 
gruity. I will close by suggesting to you that our brethren of the South 
and their Northern sympathizers are fast departhig from the great prin- 
ciple of individual freedom, the bulwark of national liberty, and imita- 
tmg the clan government of past ages. 

Mr. President, I am glad to be here to-day and mingle with the citi- 
zens of Massachusetts in what I call a new-fashioned, godly celebration 
of the Fourth of July, without powder, without drums, and best and 
bravest of all, without intoxicating hquor. 

The ninth sentiment was — 

Our Common aud Sabbath Schools. 

Rev. A. C. Childs of Rehoboth responded in the following 
manner : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I have heard of a young African who once listened to a sermon from 
one of our missionaries and afterwards repeated it to a groujj gathered 
about him ; and when the missionary told him that he was doing that 
which he himself could not do, without being conscious of any superior 
ability, the untutored negro touched his forehead with his finger, and 
said, " Wh3n I hear anything great, it remains there." By great, he 
probably meant good. Now, Sir, I have heard so many good things 
here to-day, and they have so filled up the space there [pointing to his 
forehead] that I am afraid the little I was intending to say is actually 
crowded out. 

The sentiment to which I am invited to respond is, " Our Common 



100 THE CELEBRATION. 

and Sabbath Schools." These are some of the institutions in wliich we 
as an American people are wont to glory ; not that they are altogether 
peculiar to us, but because on the influences which go out from them 
we are especially dependent for our success as a people. Education 
and religion are the two main pillars on which a republic must rest for its 
support. It is one thing to say this and another to feel it ; and he who 
has caught such a view of his own wants and the wants of the people as 
to feel and acknowledge this, is one on whom we may rely for assistance 
in every hour of peril. 

Next to the family, there is no place where the child is so much in- 
jBuenced as in the Common School and the Sabbath School. If it is 
true, as has been said, " that the child is father of the man," then we 
need to watch and see what sort of influences these institutions are send- 
ing forth ; for it is not the schools that educate, but the teachers who are 
employed in them. As some oiie says : " School-houses do not educate 
the inmates, and lazy, ignorant schoolmasters quite as little." What 
we want is competent teachers ; persons who are in love with their em- 
ployment, and who will teacli the truth in all exactness and precision, 
and with the greatest fullness. We need then have no fear as to the 
kind of scholars we shall have. W^ith such institutions and such teach- 
ers, "our sons will be as plants grown up in their youth, and our 
daughters as corner stones polished after the sunilitude of a palace." 

The tenth sentiment was — 

The Day we Celebrate. 

Rev. A. H. Rhodes, Pastor of the Universalist Church at 
Seekonk, but residing in Providence, responded to this senti- 
ment as follows : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

In the few remarks I shall make in response to this sentiment, I pro- 
pose to l)e rather desultory. In tlie first place, I would remark that 
such an occasion has never before been granted to me, and may never be 
again. Dr. Carpenter must have forgotten Dr. Martin. It is my pleas- 
ure to say here that I believe I owe the duration of my mortal life, 
under God, to the scientific medical skill of that man. I am not at 
present a resident of Seekonk. I live m that border State to which 
allusion has been made as having attempted to deprive you of some of 



THE CELEBRATIOISr. 101 

your territory. But as a protest has been made against our marriage, 
I will not enforce the bans, as forced marriages do not amount to much. 
But I suppose, though you will not join us, you will still bring your 
corn to market at Providence. 

When Napoleon, with his mighty hosts of French soldiers, trod the 
soil of Egypt, he presented himself before that powerful army of brave 
Mamelukes, and stimulated his men to their mightiest efforts by pointmg 
them to the pyramids and saying to them, " Soldiers ! from the heights 
of yonder pyramids, forty generations behold your actions." So I would 
say, that I believe that the spirits of our fathers are to-day bending over 
us from the high battlements of heaven, taking cognizance of this meet- 
ing, and reading the motives of our hearts ; and I believe that our course 
is meeting their approbation, and that it is our duty so to cultivate our 
spu-itual and moral energies that here in this existence we may be able- 
to apprehend the great fact that those sainted dead are ministerino- 
spirits here. 

I am called upon to respond to the sentiment, " The Day we Cele- 
brate." To-day we have a lively sense of the privileges of independ- 
ence. Tingling in the veins of our fingers is the sense of the great fact 
of our fathers' physical emancipation from George the Third. But, my 
friends, men and women of America, let me tell you, while you boast over 
the glorious achievements of their Revolutionary efforts, wliile you glory 
over the historic fjxct, while you joy over your inalienable rights, there 
is an emancipation in the future of which you now but little dream, one 
which shall eclipse that from George the Third as much as that great 
temple which stood upon Mount Moriah eclipsed this humble church of 
the Most High. It is that private emancipation of which we read, when 
Christ shall have destroyed the devil and all his works, and shall brino- 
to an end all transgression and sin, and the Great Fathei- — not only of 
the American brotherhood, but the Great Father of all the generations 
of humanity — shall raise us up and make us to sit together in heavenly 
places in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

The eleventh sentiment was — 

The Fourth of July, 177G— A day of trial to our fathers, but one of joyful remem- 
brance to their posterity. 

Rev. Francis Horton, Pastor of tlie Congregational Church 
at Barrington, R. I., made the following response : 



102 THE CELEBRATION. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

To one bom almost under the shadow of Bunker Hill, and whose 
earliei-t recollections of a venerable grandsire are associated with details 
of that memorable field where Warren fell, and whose residence for 
years was not far from the spot where was shed the early blood of the 
Revolution, nothing can be more grateful than to respond to the senti- 
ment just expressed. The 4th of July, 1776, is nearly related to the 
17th of June preceding, and to the 19th of April, 1775. The latter of 
those historic days is commemorated all the way from Cambridge to 
Lexington, with enthusiasm scarcely surpassed by that whicli is common 
to our country on this national holiday. The first martyrs of the Ameri- 
can Revolution were found in that vicinity ; and the fair heritage which 
they have left to their descendants is pre-eminently precious on that 
account. Where now are seen richly cultivated gardens, and splendid 
villas, and populous villages, resistance to royal authority was manifes- 
ted in deeds of heroic daring and sacrifice, that have rendered the names 
of those men immortal. 

The battle of Bunker Hill, as is well known, was a significant preface 
to the Declaration of Independence. It was a contest indicative of what 
was to be hazarded by those then espousing the cause of freedom. 

When the representatives of the United States of America, in Gen- 
eral Congress assembled, appeahng to the Supreme Judge of the world 
for the rectitude of their intentions, did, in the name and by the author- 
ity of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare 
that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be. Free and Inde- 
pendent States — and, for the support of this declaration, with a firm 
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, mutually pledged to 
each other their fives, their fortunes and their sacred honor — it was a 
day of trial, clearly confessed. Their deliberations for weeks in the 
State House in Philadelphia bore witness to the heroism with which 
they met the perils of their position. Their words thus had meaning 
which we do well to remember ; for their lives, and property, and repu- 
tation, were at stake in giving their signature to that solemn covenant. 
And our patriot sires throughout the land so understood it, when they 
ratified at once the bold announcement. AVith what heartiness did they 
rush to the support of those principles, cost what it might ! The pre- 
sumption was that many of them would be called to expend both their 
treasure and theu- blood in the fearful conflict. Whether even that 
would avail for the maintenance of freedom, was no trivial question. 



THE CELEBRATION. 103 

Yet " sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish," they were resolved 
on standing for the rigBt, while they should stand at all. No sooner, 
therefore, had the hberty bell rung out the tidings from the tower of 
the old State House, that the Declaration of Independence had passed, 
than a multitude, anxiously awaiting the decision of that grave question, 
shouted their approval in one prolonged acclaim. How admirable the 
coincidence, that the very motto on that bell was the inspired sentence, 
"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants 
thereof." Who could fail of hearing a summons to that effect, as ap- 
pealing to the patriotism of an oppressed people ! What excitement 
must have reigned throughout the city as the report of cannons, the 
blazing of bonfires, and an illumination at night, combined in signalizing 
the event. And as the news spread all over the country, what terror, 
as well as courage, must have been inspired. Think of the appalling 
hardshi|xs to be encountered, the perplexity and distress inevitably to be 
experienced, and the painful sacrifices to be endured by many, before 
the peaceful fruits of independence would be secured. Ah, it was to 
be no mere semblance of strife with the mother countiy — no luxurious 
state of things in court, or camp, or home experience, for the people of 
these colonies at the time. Should they succeed in absolving themselves 
from all alleo-iance to the British Crown, and in establishino- their free- 
dom as a nation, it would be an expensive achievement at the best.^ 
How much blood must flow — how much treasure miist be expended — 
how many homes must become houses of mourning ! Taking the most 
hopeful view of the case which reason afforded, heroic souls were they 
who coidd look through the gloom to the glory beyond ! 

But we bless Heaven that there were men, whom we fondly call our 
fathers, who were fit for the accomplishment of this providential purpose. 
Whatever we, their natural offspring, may be ready to do or to decline 
in the cause of freedom, they dared to do right, yea, to speak, and to 
act, to Hve and to die for popular liberty. Honored be their memories 
till the end of time. 

What an inheritance is this which has descended to us from our Revo- 
lutionary ancestors — ^what a countiy — ^what a constitution of government 
— what physical, and intellectual, and commercial resources ! Where 
on the face of the globe is there a combination of such advantages for 
the masses of the people, comparable with these ? Who can conceive 
of a fairer field for greatness in all the essential elements of national 
success ? How has our population increased in eighty-four years, from; 



104 THE CELEBRATION. 

less tlian four millions to more than thirty millions ! True, sadly true, 
reproachfully and most crimmally true, four millions of these are slaves ! 
And were that fact without a hope of reversal, the doom of America 
would be deeper than that of Sodom. But there is a spirit of revival 
abroad in the land in relation to the inalienable rights of men, as pro- 
fessed by our fathers in their ever memorable Declaration ; nor will it 
cease till the Greneral Government is brought into consistency with those 
fundamental principles that are in harmony with the law of God, and 
are, in fact, immortal ! No treason is it to be true to humanity in all 
its forms, recognizing everywhere the brotherhood of the race. Nor 
may secessionists expect the majority of the freemen of these United 
States to resign their rights of free speech, and free press, and election 
to public office of such men as will administer the affairs of government 
in accordance with the principles of its illustrious founders. 

Let no fanatical sentiments of insurrection be encouraged, and no in- 
vasion upon the constitutional prerogatives of individual States, but let 
freemen speak and act, as now they may, throughout our widely ex- 
tended country, in favor of what is due to all classes, and right for all, 
as approved of Heaven, and this year will be signalized a century to 
come, with some of the thankfuhiess which is cherished towards 177G. 

The twelfth sentiment was — 

The Commouwealth of Massachusetts. 

The thirteenth sentiment was — 

Our Common Country. 

Owing to the lateness of the hour, these two regular toasts 
were not responded to, but instead thereof, the President read 
the following letter from Ex-Gov. Clifford : 

New Bedford, Jime 29, 1860. 

Rev. and Dear Sir, — On my return last evening, after an absence of 
several weeks, I found the invitation with which the Committee of Ar- 
rangements have honored me, to be present at the proposed celebration 
in Seekonk, on the 4th of July next. 

I need not assure you, sir, who know so well my affection for the spot 
where my loved and honored mother was born and died, that there is 
no occasion of this nature which I should participate in with more sat- 
isfaction, if it were practicable for me to do so. But my professional 



THE CELEBRATION. 105 

engagements require my presence at Nantucket next week, to attend the 
Supreme Court, and I am most reluctantly compelled to forego the pleas- 
ure to which the Committee have so kindly invited me. 

With my thanks to them for their remembrance of me on an occasion 
of so much interest, and with my best wishes for a most euccesstul 
celebration, I am, dear sir, 

Youi' friend and obedient servant, 

JOHN H. CLIFFORD. 
To Rev. James 0. Barney. 



Joseph Brown, Esq., of Seekonk, then gave an interesting 
history of some curiosities which were to be seen in the tent. 
These articles were : 

Five chairs which were occupied by General Washington and 
his staff, when they stopped in Coventry, Rhode Island, on their 
march from Boston to New York ; also a stand and a table which 
were in the room where Washington lodged on that occasion. 

The identical chair in which King Philip sat, near by, when 
the town was burnt by the Indians, in 1676. This chair origi- 
nally belonged to Preserved Abel, an early settler ; and before 
any difficulties had arisen with the Indians, whenever King Philip 
visited the " ring of the town," he always called on Mr. Abel, 
and was offered the compliment of sitting in this " big arm chair." 

There was also exhibited the original iron kettle or stew pot 
once owned by King Philip, and in which he had cooked many 
a muskrat in his wigwam at Mount Hope. It has been pre- 
served one hundred and eighty-four years. 

The sword worn by Sir William Pepperell at the capture of 
Louisburg, in 1745. 

Six silver service cups, presented to the original church as 
follows : 

One by Capt. Thomas Willet, in 1674 ; 

One by Rev. Noah Newman, in 1678 ; 

One by Mr. Samuel Newman, in 1747 ; 

One by Mrs. Mary Walker, in 1748 ; 

One by Mr. Edwin Glover, in 1751 ; 

One by Mr. David Poriin, iu 1754. 
14 



106 THE CELEBRATION". 

These and other articles descending from " days of yore " 
were explained in an able and intelligent manner by Mr. Brown, 
the Chairman of the Committee, and was listened to with pro- 
found attention and visibly deep interest. 

After this exhibition of antique articles, the whole congrega- 
tion united in singing the following Ode, originally written by 
"William J. Pabodie of Providence for another purjDOse, but al- 
tered to meet this occasion. It was sung in the tune called " Old 
Hundred," in which more than a thousand voices united ; and 
under the sympathetic influence of surrounding circumstances, 
producing a most thrilling effect — -many old patriotic saints giv- 
ing vent to their emotions by calhng it a " heaven upon earth." 

From dwellings by the stormy deep, And yet a nobler boon is ours ; 

From city's mart and forest side, Our fathers sought in sore distress, 

From shadowy vales that softly sleep From lands where stern oppression lowers, 

By Narragansett's storied tide, — A refuge in a wilderness. 

Home to this church, great God ! we come, They came, they suffered, and they died ;. 

Blest with Thy rich and bounteous store ; Yet planted here a dkathless tree. 

Beneath yon broad, majestic dome, Beneath whose branches far and wide, 

Thy praise to sing, Thy grace adore ! Kesound the anthems of the free ! 

For lo ! where once the savage trod, Theirs was the stern but glorious task, 

And fiercely wild the war whoop rung, — To raise its branches high in air ; 

Where darlilv o'er tk" unfuvrowed sod, Yet Europe's miUions vainly ask 

A wilderness its shadows flung. — Its fruit to taste— its shade to share : — 

Ten thousand peaceful homesteads rise Be ours the mission, God of love, 

O'er all this broad and peaceful land ; To cause its fragrant boughs to spread, 

And, pointing to th' eternal skies, Till towering every land above. 

Thy pillar'd fanes serenely stand. On every heart its dews be shed. 

Great Gob ! we humbly own Thy Name, 

Through the two hundred years now llown ; 
And may our children own the same, 

Through the two hundred years to come. 

When the melody of this piety and patriotism had ascended 
to its congenial regions, the Rev. and venerable Dr. Benedict, 
the oldest clergyman present, asked of God, and conferred on 
all, a Parting Blessing. 

Thus concluded these interesting festivities, and the assembly 
dispersed, — each individual appearing to feel, as from the depths 
of the heart, that the Historical Celebration of July 4, 1^60, on 
Seekonk Plain, was an occasion to be remembered for the re- 
mainder of life. 



ANTI-ERRATUM. 

As A MERITED COMPLIMENT TO THE SKILL AND ACCUKACY 

OF THE Printer, the Author takes pleasure 

t 

IN INSERTING THIS ARTICLE INSTEAD OF 
A MUCH LESS AGREEABLE ONE, 

CALLED "Errata." 



GENERAL INDEX. 



It may provoke a smile to meet with an index to an affair like this ; but the 
author has a reason for it. He has often been so impatient at the loss of time in 
seeking for a mere date, name, or isolated fact, in larger books without indexes, 
that he has more than once been tempted to take a left-handed oath over some 
Comic Almanac that he would never have anything to do with the production of 
any book, however small, without giving it an index. Feeling, therefore, some- 
thing of the full weight of such inconvenience, and also the responsibility of an 
oath strongly hinted at but never really taken, the author trusts that there will 
not be much disposition to fiud fault with a labor which costs the reader nothing, 
and may add to his convenience. And it may also serve to help extend the prac- 
tice by others. 



Age — ages, past, present and future, 9, 
10, i;», 47. 

Antiquity, 33, 105. 

Angier, Rev. Samuel, 34. 

Attleborough, 37, 84, 89, 93. 

Amidown, Ebenezer, 38. 

America, 1'2, 13, 14, 22, 23, 42, 57. 

Apostrophized speech from the depart- 
ed, 30, 31. 

Athense et Fasti Oxonienses, quoted 
from, 49. 

Athenaeum, at Boston, 55. 

Avery, Mr., of Norton, 56. 

Arnold, Hon. Samuel G., (£UOted, 56. 

Authorities referred to, 57. 

Allen Zachariah, 58. 

Autograph of Rev. Samuel Newman, 62. 

Allen, Dr., 91. 

Abel, Preserved, 105. 

Anvils, 97. 



B. 



Babylon, alluded to, 10. 

Baaibec, alluded to, 10. 

Banbury, Eng., 11, 62. 

Bells, drum used instead of, 17, 32. 

Brown, John, 18, 39. 

Bowen, Richard, 19, 29, 36. 

Boston, 25, 27, 40, 42, 44, 55. 



Benedict, Rev. Dr. David, 26, 74, 78 ; his 

speech, 82, 106. 
Burkley, Rev. Mr., 33. 
Baptist, 25, 26, 35, 74. 
Barney, Rev. James 0., 36, 73, 74, 77, 79. 
Barrington, 37, 101. 
Blackstone, Rev. William, 37, 56. 
Boscobel, 43. 
Bacon, Sir Francis, 45. 
Ballot-box, 46. 
Band-box, 47. 
Ballot and Bullet, 46. 
Braintree, town of, 54. 
Bullock, Hon. Nathaniel, 56. 
Bliss Leonard, historian, 68. 
Bradford, William, Gov., 58, 77. 
Blodgett, Rev. Dr. Constantine, 74, 77; 

his speech, 87. 
Brown, Joseph, 75, 105, 106. 
Bishop, James M., 79. 
Benediction, 78. 
Bowen, Dr. Thomas, 90. 
Bridgham, Dr. Joseph, 90. 
Bucklin,Drs., 91. 
Bullock, Drs., 92. 
Blackington, Dr., 92. ' 
Blanding, Drs., 92. 
Billings, Dr., 92. 
Bliss, Dr. James, 92. 
Bolton, Dr. George A., 92. 
Bowen Simeon, his speech, 93. 
Bunker Hill, 102. 



110 



GENERAL INDEX 



Coffins and Shrouds, 11. 
Cane, an ancient one, 13. 
Concordance, 14, '21, 22, 29, 31, 33, 49, 52, 

53, 54, 55. 
Colony, Plymouth, 16, 25, 27, 28, 53, 83, 

84. 
Colony, Massachusetts, 16, 18, 25, 28, 33. 
Connecticut, 13, 18, 28, 34, 96. 
Customs and Habits of the first settlers 

ofthe town, 19, 20, 21. 
Cooper, Dea. Thomas, 29, 32, .55. 
Carpenter, Dea. William, 29, 89. 
Communication, imaginary one from the 

first settlers, 30, 31. 
Cemetery of ancient Rehoboth, 11, 29, 87. 
Carnes, Rev. John, 34. 
Cumberland, 37. 
Congress, 40, 96. 
Coin, first in America, &c., 42, 43, 44, 45, 

46. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 43. 
Charles II., 43. 
Cartridge-box, 46. 

Compact, or first law of the town, 50. 
Cruden, Alexander, 53, 57. 
Cygnea Cantio, a book, 64. 
Cape Cod, 59. 

Concluding note, personal, 60. 
Creed of the author, 61. 
Celebration, history of, 71. 
Committee of Arrangements, 75, 79. 
Carpenter, Dr. Benoni, his speech, 89, 

100. 
Carpenter, Drs., 92. 
Childs, Rev. A. C, his speech, 99. 
Clifford, John H., Ex-Gov., 104. 



D. 



Dorchester, alluded to, 13, 14, 27, 28, 55, 

Drum, 17, 32. 

Dedham, 18, 27. 

Diary, extract from Newman's, 23. 

Death of the founder of Rehoboth, 32. 

Declaration of Independence, 42, 44, 45, 
74, 77, 93, 94, 102. 

Daggett, Hon. John, extract from his his- 
torical paper before the Old Colony 
Society, 52, 55 ; his speech, 84. 

Dimond, Hon. Byron, 56. 

Dinner, the, 78, 79. 

Dean, Rev. James, 79. 

Davenport, Dr., 92. 

Dean, Rev. Sidney, his speech, 96. 



E. 

Elliot, Eev. Dr. John, 32. 
Ellis, Rev. John, 34, 35. 
Education, 40. 
Europe, 22, 106. 
Ezekiel, the prophet, 42, 43. 



Empire, Western, 41, «4. 
Eagle, prophetic, 44, 45. 
Edmond, Sir Tliomas, 54. 
Ellis, William, 75. 
Egypt, 101. 



F 



Featly, Rev. Dr. Daniel, 12, 49, 53, 54. 
Freedom, 45, 97, 99. 
Frozen North, 45. 
Flint, Rev. Henrj-, 54, 62. 
Freedom, human, enigma of, 45. 
Fitts, Josepli B., 75. 
Fitts, Dea. D. B., 78. 
Fowler, Dr. Isaac, 92. 
France, 54, 98. 

G. 

Gouge, Rev. William, 12, 49, 53, 54. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 27. 

German University, 33. 

Greek Classics, 33. 

Grave, 33, 38, 39, 84. 

Greenwood, Rev. Thomas, 34. 

Greenwood, Rev. John, 34. 

Genesis, quoted from, 15. 

Gorton, Samuel, of Rhode Island, 56. 

Government, the first adopted at Ply- 
mouth, 41, 58. 

Genealogical tables of one family from 
each of seven generations, 62. 

Gardner, Hon. Johnson, 74, 77. 

Gardiner, E. R., reporter, 75. 

Garibaldi, Gen., 98. 



H. 



Hull, Eev. Joseph, 14. 

Hinghara, 14. 

Houses, how built, 19. 

Hour-glass, to preach by, 17. 

Holmes, Obadiah, 25, 26", 27. 

Hermon, dews of, 28. 

Hyde, Rev. Ephraim, 34, 56. 

Hill, Rev. John, 35. 

Historical Societ}-, R. I., 58. 

Historical Magazine, 60. 

Hollis, Thomas, memoirs, 60. 

Hoyt, Isaiah, 75. 

Hulchings, Dr. Theophilus, 91. 

Hartshorn, Dr. Isaac, 92. 

Historical Society, Ct., 96. 

Historical Society, Mass., 49, 57. 

Horton, Rev. Francis, his speech, 101. 

Habeas corpus, 98. 

Homer, 28. 



I. 



Independence, Declaration of, 42, 44, 45, 

74, 77, 93, 94, 102. 
Indians, 18, 23, 56, 86, 105. 
Italy, 98. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Ill 



Jenner, Rev. Thomas, 14. 

Joshua, 15. 

Job, last sermon of Newman preached 

from, 31. 
Johnson, Dr. Artemas, 92. 



Karnak, alluded to, 10. 

King James of England, 54, 58, 59. 

King's College, 54. 

King William III., 55. 

King John of England, 98. 

King George III., 101. 



Laud, Archbishop, 13. 
Lenthal, Rev. Robert, 14. 
Latin epitapli, 33, 56. 
Leyden, 41, 58. 
Liberty, riddle of, 43. 
Lightning, political, 46. 
Lebanon, cedar of, 44. 
Lempriere's Biog. Diet., 49, 54. 
Lord's Prayer, 54, 61. 

M. 

Mather, Rev. Dr. Cotton, 11, 12, 32, 56, 59. 
Magnalia, 11, 56, 57, 59. 
Midliope Chapel, Eug., 13. 
Mather, Rev. Richard, 13, 14, 27, 28. 
Massasoit, the Indian Chief, 15, 51, 78. 
Meetings and Meeting-houses, 16, 17, 19, 

82, 97. 
Mr. and Mrs., what called, 19. 
Miles, Rev. John, 33. 
Mayflower, 36, 41, 58, 85, 93, 96. 
Manhattan, 38. 
Mount Vernon, 47. 
Millenium, political, 46. 
Mather, Rev. Dr. Increase, 49. 
Mass. Hist. Coll., 49. 
Money, Indian, 51. 

Mason, Rev. Perez, 79 ; his speech, 80. 
Maxcy, Rev. Dr. Jonathan, 86. 
Miller, Drs. 91. 
Manchester, Dr., 92. 
Magna Charta, 98. 
Mamelukes, 101. 
Mount Moriah, 101. 
Martin, Dr. Calvin, 100. 
Mount Hope, 105. 



N, 



Nature, 9, 10, 37, 39, 68. 

Newman, Rev. Samuel, son of Richard, 

11, 13, 14,15,21,28,31,32,49,50,52. 

.53,55,56,57,61. 



New England, customs of, &c., 17, 33, 38, 

43, 49. 
Newman, Rev. Noah, 23, 33, 55, 105. 
Nestor, 28. 

Norton, Rev. John, 28. 
Neander, Michael. 33. 
Narragansett, 38, 106. 
New York, 38, 58. 
Norton, town of, 56. 
Newman, Rev. Antipas, 54, 62. 
Newman, Dea. Samuel, 54, 62. 
NewB)an, Richard, 11, 62. 
Napoleon, 101. 



O. 



Oxford, Eng., 11, 12, 53, 54. 

Otis, James, 40. 

Oak, Royal, 43. 

Office, robes of, 46 ; potage of, 47. 

Old Buryins; Ground at Seekonk, 55. 

Ode and 6ld Hundred, 106. 



Payne, Stephen, IS, 19, 29, 63. 

Premonition, 33. 

Philip, King, 37. 85, 105. 

Pavne. Nathaniel, 38. 

Plymouth, 41, 58, 93, 96. 

Piiarims, 41, 84, 86, 93, 96. 

PaitVey John G., Hist. N. E., 51. 

Peters, Hugh, his mistake, 53. 

Progress of the American people, 45. 

Pawtucket, 74, 78, 79, 05. 

Pearse, Robert M., 75. 

Perrin, Daniel, 78. 

Papers, Reporters, &c., 75, note. 

Pierce, Capt. Mitchell, his fight, 85. 

Pyramid.•^, 101. 

Pepperell, Sir William, 105. 

Pabodie, William J., 106. 



Quadrennial spasms, 46. 
Quincy, town of, 54. 

K. 

Rubens, the painter, 10. 
Raphael, the painter, 10. 
Reholjoth, 15, 25, 20, 27, 49, 51, 52, 53, 

56, 57, 61, 86, 94, 97. 
Read, John, 29. 

Ring of the town, 15, 21, 86, 105. 
Revolution, contributions from Reho- 

both, 39, 40, 41. 
Republic, American, 41, 45, 46, 47. 
Robinson, Rev. John, 41, 58. 
Kiddle, on a coin, 42. 



112 



GENERA li INDEX. 



Royal Oak at Boscobel, 43. 

Rights, human, 45, 101. 

Ridley, Dr., anecdote of pig corn, 91. 

Kodliiff, Dr. John F., [born in Germany,] 

92. 
Robertson, Dr., 92. 

Rhodes, Rev. Andrew H., his speech, 100. 
Russia, 98. 



S. 



Science, 9, 10, 93, 97. 

Slieletons and Bones, 11. 

Seekonk, 15, 37, 55, 71, 95, 107. 

Sam, an Indian, naturalized, 18, 19. 

Stone, Rev. Samuel, 28. 

Stiles, Rev. President, 28, 56. 

Spiritualism, 29. 

Symes, Rev. Zachariah, 33. 

Swansea, 37, 92. 

Starkweather, Ephraim, 39, 83. 

Starkweather, Hon. Samuel, 88. 

Starkweather, James 0., 83. 

" Soul Liberty," 25. 

Shilling, the cedar or pine tree, 42, 60. 

Spasms, political, 46. 

Southern States, dark clouds, but harm- 
less thunder, 45, 46. 

Signers to the first government of the 
town, 50; at Plymouth, 59. 

Stockholders, what were they? 51. 

Hears's Olden Time, 51. 

Shove, Rev. George, 54, 62. 

Stowell, Rev. A. H., 74, 77. 

Smith, Dr. Nathan, 86, 90. 

Stanley, Dr., 92. 

Slaves in U. S., 99, 104. 

Stew-pot, King Philip's, 105. 



Time, 9, 10. 
Thebes, 10. 

Titian, the painter, 10. 
Townsmen, instead of Selectmen, 16. 
Toleration, 25. 
Temple, Sir Thomas, 43. 
Taunton, Indian name of, 52; third min- 
ister of, 54. 
Thayer, Rev. William M., 77. 
Turner, Dr. David, 90. 
Thurber, Dr. Daniel, 90. 
Thayer, Dr., 92. 
Taunton and Tauntonians, 52, 96. 



U. 



University, Harvard, 34, 49. 
Universitv, Brown, 36, 39, 61, 86. 
University, Oxford, Eng., 11. 12, 49, 63. 
University, Ufeldt, in Germany, 33. 
University, Cambridge, Eng., 52. 
Union, American, 41, 46. 



Vox Dei, or voice of God, 44. 

Vox populi, or voice of the people, 44. 

Vernon, Mount, 47. 

Vista of ages, 47. 

Virginia, early name of New England, 

58. 
Virgil, quotation from, 61. 



W. 

Warham, Rev. John, 13. 

Weymouth, 14, 21, 51, 55. 

Williams, Rev. Roger, 25, 37, 51, 56, 57, 

78. 
Wheaton, Robert, 29. 
Warren, 37. 

Willet, Thomas, 38, 58, 105. 
West, Benjamin, 38, 86. 
Worcester, battle of, 43. 
Washington, 47, 105. 
Woman, 47. 
World, Eastern, 45. 
World, entire, 26, 37, 97. 
Wood, Anthony, 49. 
Wampum, Indian money, 51. 
Will, Rev. Samuel Newman's, 54, 55. 
Wight, Rev. Dr. Henry, 65. 
Wenham, Mass., 54, 62. 
Winthrop, Gov., 62. 
Willard, George 0., 79. 
Wheaton, Dr. Levi, 91. 
Winslow, Drs., 92. 
Wheelock, Dr., 92. 
Wilkinson, Judge Ezra, 95. 
Warren, Gen. Joseph, 102. 



Y. 

Young's Chronicles, 57. 
Yale College, 83. 



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